


Conversation

by BurningTea



Category: Lethal Weapon (TV), Leverage
Genre: Eliot Whump, First Meeting, Gen, Guns, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote Eliot so you should have expected angst, Mentions of torture off screen, Multi, Multiple Pov, Outside POV on Eliot, Outside POV on the Leverage team, Riggs does not know who Eliot is, Riggs ruins a con, but we are not at the comfort bit yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 67
Words: 82,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8407339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: Riggs is in the store when the guy with the gun starts threatening to shoot people. He steps in and finds this situation is not fully in his control. OrMartin Riggs runs into Eliot Spencer when Eliot's on a job. It ends up putting a hitch in everybody's plans.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> in my defence, I have drunk about 5 or 6 shots of JD and various mixers, so it isn't my fault. Bite me. Also, that music that plays when Riggs says he misses his girl, so, you know, I'm emotionally not totally stable. 
> 
> Let me know what you think.

There isn’t enough alcohol in the world to account for why the guy’s standing on the counter at the other end of the shop, a sword in one hand and a gun in the other, shouting something in a mix of at least three languages. 

Riggs stands in the doorway, hands out, and tries very hard not to remember the last vet he had to help. This guy took up with his shouting as Riggs was browsing for some snacks behind a stand. He wasn’t called out to this one and he’s been given no heads-up. No briefing or instructions. Still, there’s the way the man holds himself, the way he stands, that tells Riggs this is someone who has put in some serious service. 

One second, he’s sure it’s an ex-marine he’s looking at, then something else. Maybe this poor guy was pulled from one thing to another. Riggs has heard stories. He got out himself before he could be disappeared into anything shady, or shadier than the hell of fighting other humans for unclear reasons could be, and he’s going on little more than intuition and a few minutes of observation here, but this one looks to be further over the edge than Riggs is himself. Hell, he looks past leaping-off-roofs crazy. 

“You stay right where you are, boy,” the guy says, spinning into a solid stance and pointing the gun right at Riggs. “I ain’t wanting to shoot you clear through.”

There’s a ring of sincerity in that, at least. 

“Not gonna argue with you, buddy,” Riggs says. “And see? No gun.”

“You got at least one on you,” the guy says, his voice ringing through the space. There’s a hint of a growl to it, and a southern accent coming on a bit thick, and this man has more hair than Riggs does, partly tied back and partly falling in his face. “Don’t you try to pull anything. You hear me? 

“Southern boy, are you?” Riggs shouts, keeping his hands out and steady and a smile on his face. He isn’t going to try and out-crazy this one. It’s only fun if it has a chance of working. Or if it has a good chance of going so badly wrong he won’t be shaming himself to Miranda when he sees her again, but this one has too many possible causalities, and whatever Murtaugh might think, Riggs has never intended to take anyone else out with him. “Don’t suppose you’d rather put those down, go grab a beer and catch a game? I know a decent bar.”

“Is there something wrong with you?” the guy asks, as though he isn’t the one holding up a store in the middle of the afternoon with what looks to be a katana. “I ain’t gonna watch a game with you.”

The guy turns again, this time leveling his gun at a security guard Riggs hadn’t spotted. The guard freezes, his hand on his gun. Sneaking up from that angle was never going to work, but it isn’t like Riggs had chance to point it out. 

Riggs takes a sliding, careful step closer. 

“Well, shit,” he says. “If you’re having so much fun here, I don’t wanna cramp your style. But let that guy go. Come on, man. He’s, what, about two weeks from retirement? And looks like his daily exercise is reaching for the next beer? That ain’t a challenge to you.”

He sees the man on the counter narrow his eyes. There’s just a second where the guy’s expression shifts, like he’s listening to someone else. Crap. Is this one hearing voices?

Another step brings him almost close enough to make a run for the counter, but he still won’t make it in time if the guy fires on that guard.

“Leave this one be?” the guy asks over his shoulder, not taking his attention from the guard. Still, Riggs has the feeling the gun would be on him before he could get his own out and aimed, good as he is. “And just why would I do that, bubba?”

“He’s just a regular joe, trying to make a buck. You know?” Riggs asks. “Whatever your beef, you can take it out far better on someone else, right?” And, hell, it’s worked before. “Someone younger, and, let’s be honest, better looking? Let me help you.”

He takes another step, and this time the man with the gun and the sword points the sword at him. He leaves the gun on the guard. 

“Go,” the guy says, jerking the gun so the guard can see who’s meant by that. “I said run!”

The guard breaks out into a stumbling run, and Riggs heaves a sigh of relief. He’s the only one in the guy’s line of sight now. He’s pretty sure. In fact, he’s suddenly a lot closer, as the man leaps down from the counter and strides up to him, the gun now aimed right at Riggs’ right eye.

“You think you can sneak up on me?” the guy asks. His eyes are stormy, and kinda hot, and look like they belong on the face of someone who could tear a person to pieces and not worry overmuch about it. “You think you’ve gotten so much better in the last few years?”

Which…what?

“I’m sorry. You have the advantage of me,” Riggs says, pausing and upping his smile.

“Always do,” the man says. Growls. “What are you trying to pull here? You on a job? ‘Cos you’re screwing this one up for me, and I do not owe you big enough for that. Just get out of here.”

From this distance, and at the volume the man’s dropped to, Riggs is almost sure no-one else can hear. He doesn’t know why this man thinks he knows him, unless it’s someone he met out on deployment and doesn’t remember. And he thinks he’d remember anyone who looked like that. He has a chance to connect, though, and given there are still people crouched behind display cases and shelves throughout the store, he’ll take it. 

It’s just then his phone rings.

“Do you need to get that?” the man asks, pulling a face Riggs can’t quite read but doesn’t want to cross. 

“I’m good,” he says, leaving his hands right where they are.

“Oh, no. I insist,” the man says. “What if it’s important? I mean, all kinds of things can be important, right? Important enough you don’t fucking show up to a meet we’ve paid you-”

“Whoa,” Riggs says, over the noise of his phone’s continuing ring. An in is fine, but not if the guy’s putting him right in the middle of some delusion. “I don’t know you.”

“You’re Quinn,” the guy says. “Quit playing around.”

“No,” Riggs says, and grimaces himself. This could really go either way. “I’m Detective Martin Riggs. And you are?”

The guy’s head jerks back and he mutters something under his breath. Riggs makes out ‘not’ and ‘damnit’, but he can’t get anymore. 

“You ain’t Quinn?” the guy asks, after a beat. 

“No.”

The phone’s still ringing. 

“Give me the phone,” the man says, and Riggs moves slowly, shifting to hook his phone and toss it smoothly to the would-be shooter, who catches it easily with the hand holding the sword. He jabs the phone and the ringing stops. “A cop,” he says, and again Riggs has the sense he isn’t just talking to himself. “Yes, I’m sure!”

“You talking to someone there, buddy?” Riggs asks. He relaxes into his role, because no-one else can be hurt by what he does now. Only himself. Maybe the guy with the gun. But that’s different. He made a choice when he walked in here and yelled at everyone to stay out of his way. “Is it someone cute?”

“He thinks he is,” the man mutters, and scowls. “It’s a bit late for that. Well, you come in here and sort it, then.”

“Is he the one wanting you to shoot people?” Riggs asks. 

“He’s the one wanting his ass kicked and his arms torn off and fed to a fucking tribble,” the man snaps. “Yes, I said tribble! What, I’m not allowed to know what a tribble is? No, you adjust your attitude! He’s a cop.”

The last is said in a hiss, as though Riggs might not have noticed already this gunman is arguing with himself. 

“That I am,” Riggs says. “But we can both walk out of here, no harm done.”

But this one isn’t listening to him.

“I’m calling it,” the guy says, and shifts his stance. 

Riggs sees his chance, and takes it. Lunging, he goes for the gun and finds himself flat on his back, the muzzle aimed back at his eye. His left one this time. The man doesn’t look manic anymore. He doesn’t look unbalanced. He does look deadly.

“Try that again and I’ll be sending you home to your wife with a few extra holes,” he says, and must see something in Riggs’ reaction, because he narrows his eyes and his expression changes yet again. “There’s something wrong with that, ain’t there?”

It’s not that Riggs goes around telling everyone he meets, but this whole situation has gone just slightly sideways and he’s off kilter. It’s not so much that a rug’s been pulled out from under him as a whole floor.

“She died,” he says. 

“And you’re trying to go with her?” the man asks. “Because no way should you have come at me like you did. You think I don’t know how to approach a guy with a gun? I’d a been anybody else, you’d have been risking a bullet to the brain. But I’m thinking you’d be okay with that.”

Riggs is lying on his back, on a floor that frankly could do with more sweeping, and is being evaluated by a gunman who’s held up a whole store. 

“When did this turn into a therapy session?” he asks. 

“Ain’t a therapy session,” the man says. “I ain’t asked you to share. You been doing that all by yourself. Just like you wanted me to let anyone else get to safety. So, you got a death wish, but you don’t want to take anyone else out with you. Sounds like maybe you’re the one needs help.”

Riggs swallows. 

“There’s people trying,” he says. “Can’t see you being much use at it.”

This time, he gets a smile. It’s tight and controlled, more a twitch of the lips, but it turns those eyes warmer, just for a moment.

“You might be surprised,” he says. His gaze unfocuses and he shakes his head. “I said I’m calling it. I’ll be out of here in two. We got some loose ends to wrap up. And find out where Quinn’s at.” There’s a pause, and the man smiles again. This time it’s warmer. “Because I just found his twin. Detective Martin Riggs. Who I’m thinking is someone we need to keep an eye on.”

Before Riggs can say anything else, the man shrugs.

“Sorry, Detective,” he says. “But you don’t strike me as the sort to give up the chase.”

The last thing Riggs sees is the guy moving, fast and certain, and then everything goes dark.

When he comes round, it’s to Murtaugh fussing about him taking on gunmen alone and to the disturbing feeling he just met one of the sanest people he’s ever been around. 

“Get off me,” he says, pushing at Murtaugh, who’s trying to check his head. “I’ll get an ice-pack. Come on. I need to go look up a name. I think it might lead us to the guy.”

He hopes it does, because this whole thing had the sense of being the start of the conversation he very much wants to pursue.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trish wanted to talk. This one is less cracky. I just have feelings about what Trish might feel about Riggs.

Trish watches Riggs from the doorway, a mug of coffee in her hand. 

“You planning on making an actual sandwich there?” she asks. “Or is that your idea of a meal?”

Riggs smiles at her round the slice of ham he’s shoving into his mouth, his forefinger doing the work of a fork. It’s disgusting and obscene and it makes her heart ache. The guy does all these crazy things, but he eats like he’s never heard of a plate. Trish knows that isn’t true, and she tries not to dwell on why Riggs might want to act as though he never had a stable home back in Texas.

“I was going to make lunch for my kids with that,” Trish points out, gesturing with the mug. “You leave them any?”

Riggs’ smile fades and he glances down, pulling his finger out and frowning. He’s still chewing when he looks back at her, but he looks almost sad about it. 

“I seem to have eaten most of it,” he says. “What can I say? You stock a great kitchen.”

“I try to,” Trish says, although it was Roger who did the shopping this week. “Listen, I don’t mind you eating here. I’m kind of afraid you might starve if I stopped you. But you need to leave my kids food for their lunches, all right? Or else restock.”

“Restock?” he asks, and swallows the mouthful. 

He looks so hopeful she can’t decide if it’s an act. Then again, the more she learns about Martin Riggs the more she thinks most of what people see is some kind of act. It’s a reason she accepts she’ll find him scavenging in their kitchen a couple of times a week, and that she encourages Roger to bring him round, even if he drops the kinds of statements into dinner conversation that explode whatever they were discussing. The guy needs something stable. From what Roger’s told her, Riggs is finally starting to open up, just a little, and she isn’t going to take that away from him. 

She isn’t going to let it hurt her family, either. It already feels a little like that label applies to him, but she has to be smart, here. Roger nearly died with his heart-attack and he might be more alive now that he’s chasing all round the place with this depressed, grieving, suicidal live-wire of a man, but she doesn’t want Riggs’ problems to lead to her finding out what it’s like to lose your spouse. 

In the short-term, she wants her kids to have food.

“Yes. Restock. As in, go the store and pick up more food. Why don’t you get yourself some food for your place while you’re at it? Or at least pick up a few things for dinner and eat here.”

“I’d like that,” he says, ducking his head and pushing his hair behind his ear. It falls back across his forehead almost at once. “What do you want me to pick up?”

He leaves ten minutes later with a list and a promise to be back before she needs to leave for work. Trish nods and pretends to believe him, and pulls the extra supplies from the back of the fridge where she hid them behind cartons of tomato juice. As long as he turns up for dinner without having run into another gunman in the store, she’s going to count it as a win.


	3. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riggs sees Eliot out on the street and follows him.

He fully intends to get what Trish wants and get back to the house. He does. It’s just…he’s crossing the street when he catches sight of a head of hair he will never forget. It’s not tied up this time, but it’s the same long, thick hair. 

Riggs notices hair. People can say all they like he looks as though he’s homeless, but he didn’t always ignore his personal grooming to quite this extent, and long hair takes work. His girl always liked his hair, the other times he let it grow out. She’d have wanted Riggs to point this guy out to her.

Given he’s not been able to find any mention of the man on-line, or in any records he’s searched through at the station, Riggs weighs up making the Murtaugh kids eat at the cafeteria against losing his only lead, and takes off after the shooter from the store.

Would-be shooter. No shots were fired. He has to remember that.

He trails the guy down the street and into the next one, keeping enough people in between them that he won’t be spotted. He has to pause a time or two when the man stops to look into a store window, which always seems to include taking time to brush his hair back from his face. There’s no muttering as far as he can see, but he was closer than this when he noticed it the last time. 

Eventually, the guy ducks into a bar and Riggs follows. It’s not one he knows, but the dark wood and the lines of bottles behind the bar link it to the shared space of all bars, and Riggs can’t help but notice the JD just…there. 

There’s hardly anyone in the place, just the bar-tender, a tall black guy with a more stylish outfit than Riggs is used to seeing in this kind of bar, and a slender woman sitting at a table near the wall, her pale hair pulled up into a ponytail and her face mostly hidden by a magazine. And his target. 

His target who’s looking right at him, sitting at the bar with two shot glasses in front of him. 

“You gonna join me, or was that whole slow-motion chase scene for nothing?” the guy asks.

The drawl’s still there, but it isn’t as strong as before. There’s still the growl, too, but it’s tempered by something like humor.

As Riggs watches, the bartender twists the lid off the bottle of JD and fills the glasses.

“Got one of these for you,” the gunman says. “If you’re planning on saying something to me, sit and drink. You ain’t on duty.”

“Mighty friendly of you,” Riggs says. Smiles. He can’t afford to set this guy off, even though there are only two potential victims, and he doesn’t think there’s a real risk of it, but he also can’t be entirely sure. “Don’t mind if I do.”

He slides onto the stool a couple down from his new friend and accepts the glass that’s slid across to him, raising it before downing the liquid. 

“Good stuff,” he says, and before he can say anything else the bartender’s filling the glass again. The other guy hasn’t touched his yet. “You not thirsty? Or are you just trying to get me drunk? Because, you know, I ain’t that easy.”

“I wouldn’t get someone drunk,” the man says. “I ain’t into assaulting people.”

Riggs raises an eyebrow. He isn’t used to people who threaten a whole store and lead police officers into bars being so concerned about consent. Also, a lot of people still think waving a gun around is closer to assault than getting someone drunk. 

“Fair enough,” he says, and takes a second drink. Part of his brain, a part that sounds a lot like Murtaugh, tells him to slow down, but Riggs remembers how this guy moves, how he knocked him out so easily, and he thinks about Miranda, and lets the bartender fill his glass again. “So, there a reason you white rabbited me here?”

A scowl crosses the guy’s face.

“I ain’t a white rabbit, he says. “And I ain’t gonna pull a White Rabbit on you, either.”

There’s something behind that Riggs is clearly not getting, but he takes a mental step around it. He’s got one of two goals here: he finds out more about this gunman and tries to take him in, or he gets his death-wish. It’s feeling like the second one is heading off the table, but the undercurrent in the bar is strange, so he’s not ruling it out completely. And he’s still got to stay alert to make sure the woman and the bartender don’t get caught up in anything violent. 

“Noted,” Riggs says, and waits. No matter what Murtaugh might think, he does know how to be quiet when it’s needed.

The guy shifts and glances round, maybe checking whether the woman can hear them. It’s quiet in the bar, so it’s almost certain she can, but either he doesn’t work that out or he decides he doesn’t care.

“I brought you here to talk.”

“Brought me?”

It occurs to Riggs, probably later than it should have done, that the guy didn’t just rumble Riggs was following him.

“You planned for me to spot you?”

And that is a smile. Just like before, it warms the guy’s eyes until he looks like someone Riggs wants to trust, to have a real drink with. At least, he would have done in the past, before the accident. These days, he shies away from that kind of warmth. He’s still not sure how the Murtaughs are worming their way in. 

“I plan on this going peacefully,” the guy says. “You and me, I think we got a lot we could talk about. But mainly? I think you might be the guy to help me on a job.”

A criminal with enough crazy to threaten to shoot up a store while talking to someone invisible, and enough skill to get Riggs to follow him to an almost empty bar, also thinks Riggs might work with him. This is almost weird enough to make the day interesting. 

“You think I’ll work with you?” Riggs asks. “I’m a cop. You think we’re all dirty? That it? Because I might be due to do laundry again, but that ain’t the same thing.”

With a huff that might be a laugh, the guy finally picks up his drink and throws it back. The click of the glass meeting the bar again is loud, underscoring the silence. With his fingers still resting on the rim of the glass, the guy meets Riggs’ eyes again and holds him.

“The name’s Eliot,” he says. “From what I can find on you, you have skills I could use. How about you listen to what I got to say before you go making any decisions?”

“Go on, then,” Riggs says. Two shots isn’t even close to getting him drunk, but he’s starting to feel almost giddy. He wants to know what this is. It feels something like flirtation, like seduction, that spark of adrenaline in his body making life feel almost connected to him again. It won’t last - it never does. Even so, it’s something. “Tell me what you’ve got. Let’s see if you can talk a cop into breaking the law with you.”

Eliot laughs. 

“Oh, man. I know you’ll break the law. Just because you wear a badge while doing it don’t make it any less explosive. And I know you’ll near kill yourself to save a kid. So, yeah, I’d say my chances are pretty good.”

A kid. There’s a kid involved. Riggs still feels that rush, but it’s joined by a sick coldness in the pit of his stomach. 

“You saying you’ve taken someone’s kid?” he asks. “You the one I need to save this kid from?”

It’ll be twisted if it is, but it’s not like Riggs is a stranger to twisted. 

Eliot’s smile vanishes and he scowls. 

“Me? I ain’t hurting a kid, man. Hell, I’ve been told I get all tunnel vision when one needs saving, like I’m the only one.”

There is it again, that sense there’s more being said than Riggs is getting. The guy, Eliot, seems sincere about not hurting kids, though. 

“Then who’s this kid need saving from?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Eliot says. “We need to get her away from her own daddy, and I get that might be hard for you, but this guy is not father of the year. And I need another man in this to make it work, because if we can, I want to do it without having to kill my way out. And we need it to stick.”

“But you’d kill? To get her out?” Riggs asks. 

The way he said that was so casual, and Riggs has heard that tone about killing from people who’d never really do it, people who see killing as something so far outside of possibility it might as well be a joke. But he’s also heard it from people who’d kill as easily as they’d drink a shot of bourbon, and he thinks this Eliot might be in the second group.

“I’d kill, if I had to,” Eliot says. “Don’t mean I want to. I’m aiming to avoid it. So, you in?”

Riggs glances around to find the woman gone and the bartender out of sight. Eliot must have waited to drop that last bit until he knew they were alone, because Riggs is almost sure this is a man who wouldn’t take the risk of the wrong person overhearing him. 

“I’m going to need more, still,” he says. “You know you really should just report a kidnapping to the police.”

“Can’t do that, buddy,” Eliot says. “Guy’s got custody. Just shouldn’t have it.”

“And if you do get her out,” Riggs asks. “What then? He’ll just get her back, right? If he’s got custody.”

“I’ve got a plan,” Eliot says. “Go a whole lot smoother if I have you on board. But if you don’t want in, I’ll find another way. And don’t go thinking you’ll find me if I don’t wanna be found.”

As he speaks, Eliot stands and backs away from the bar, heading deeper into the room. He holds his hands out and smiles again.

“You decide this is something you can get on board with, you be ready to let me know. Until then, glad I could buy you a drink, Detective Riggs.”

And by the time Riggs is up and after him, Eliot’s gone.


	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murtaugh isn't happy when he hears about the drink with Eliot.

Murtaugh stares at Riggs. He stares at Riggs and his ridiculous messy hair and his glazed eyes and his smile that looks like it’s constantly on the edge of cracking and he can’t remember what he was intending to say.

“He what now?” he says instead.

“He took me to a bar,” Riggs says, and helps himself to more peas. 

“This would be the gunman?” Trish asks, but she pushes the bowl of potatoes closer to Riggs and he finishes with the peas. “The gunman who nearly shot you a few days ago?”

“Mom, if Riggs can go drinking with a guy who wants to shoot up a store, then I should be allowed one beer,” RJ says.

“Oh, no, you do not,” Murtaugh says. “No drinking for you. You are not going to know the taste of beer until you are at least thirty years old, do you understand?”

RJ rolls his eyes and shoves another mouthful of food in, looking far too much like Riggs’ table-manners have rubbed off on him for comfort. He doesn’t ask again, though.

“You went for a drink with a guy who tried to shoot you?” he asks Riggs, turning back to find his partner has his cheeks puffed out with food. “And don’t you drop that on me and then act like a chipmunk. What were you doing in a bar?”

“Drinking,” Riana says. She sounds almost cheerful about it, but she also has her phone in front of her, so she’s probably not paying attention to how terrible this is. 

“Did you drink with him?” Murtaugh asks. 

“Would have been rude not to,” Riggs says, around more food than should be in one mouth at a time. “He already had a shot waiting for me.”

“I just bet he did,” Murtaugh says. “You’re lucky it wasn’t a shot from a gun. What were you thinking? Were you thinking? What, did you sense there was alcohol at the end of the trail and just home in on it like a bee sniffing nectar? Man, what if he’d actually shot you?”

“He could have done that back in the store,” Riggs says, as thought that’s a reassuring comment in any way. “Had the gun pointed right at my eye.”

And he points at his left eye with his fork.

“You… What… Stop that!”

They eat in near silence for the rest of the meal, but afterward, when the kids are off doing whatever it is his kids do when they vanish upstairs and Trish is on the phone to a friend, Murtaugh takes a beer out to Riggs where he’s sitting in the garden. 

“He really had a drink waiting for you?” Murtaugh asks. “And that’s all he wanted? A drink?”

“What can I say?” Riggs asks. “I’m just a charming guy, I guess. Maybe he thought the first time wasn’t good enough for a first date.”

It sounds like the kind of thing that would happen to Riggs, only with fewer bullets and explosions, and Murtaugh has the feeling there’s something not being said. Not that that’s new around his partner. It’s just he thought they were getting somewhere, and now Riggs has this faraway smile on his face, a smile that makes Murtaugh worry he’ll be asked to come down and identify the body of a man with messy blond hair in the near future.

“Hey, Riggs,” he says, and waits until his partner looks round at him, the edges of that smile still there. “You’ll tell me if you’re in trouble, right? I mean, more than normal?”

The smile grows and Riggs claps a hand on Murtaugh’s back.

“Sure I will, Rog. Don’t you go worrying yourself about that. There’s nothing here you need to get upset about.”

And Riggs goes back to staring over the garden, that glazed, almost expectant look on his face doing nothing at all to ease Murtaugh’s worries. There’s definitely something Riggs isn’t telling him, and Murtaugh decides this is one time he’s going to get ahead of the problem before Riggs has him trapped in a building with a bomb about to explode.


	5. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot wants Riggs' answer on the job.

The knock on his trailer door should startle him, but Riggs is floating in that zone where pretty much nothing can get a reaction. He rolls to his feet on the third knock and takes his drink and his gun with him to find out who’s there. It’s not likely to be anyone out to attack him, not unless they’re weirdly polite about it. 

He swings the door open to find Eliot outside, staring up at him with his hair tied back in a ponytail. It looks good. Riggs isn’t above noticing, even if it’s never more than an academic exercise these days. 

“Hey,” he says, “I must have missed your message saying you’d drop round. I’d have got some snacks ready.”

Eliot manages to look less impressed than Murtaugh, Trish and Captain Avery combined, and steps up into the trailer.

“You ever heard of cleaning?” he asks, looking around.

There’s a coiled energy about him and Riggs almost wants to taunt him, just to see if he can turn it into violence. That part of his brain that watches out for these things reminds him Eliot, whoever he really is, is dangerous. Starting a fight with him might lead to more than a black eye and a few bruises. Riggs doesn’t know yet just how good Eliot is, but the way he knocked Riggs out speaks to some skill. He’s trying to decide if that makes goading him more or less appealing in this moment when Eliot nods at his gun.

“You don’t clean, but you do carry a gun around in your own home? This usual, or are we expecting company?”

“You don’t carry a gun around at all times?” Riggs asks. “What happens if you’re in the middle of polishing furniture and you need a gun?”

If he expects this guy to be prickly over the idea of doing housework, he’s mistaken. Eliot shrugs and his eyes are far too intent for Riggs’ current state.

“I need a gun, I’ll take one,” Eliot says, and it’s a statement of fact. 

“Damn,” Riggs says. “Is there any doubt in you?”

“I have doubts,” Eliot says, and his gaze lingers on Riggs’ glass. “I have some doubts about how attached you are to the bottle, and how much that’ll affect your work.”

“You came to me,” Riggs says, gesturing to himself with both hands.

He sees Eliot shift, just a fraction, and wonders if the guy really thinks he could get the gun from Riggs before he could shoot himself, accidentally or not. 

“Not how I remember it going the first time,” Eliot says, and turns away. “Mind if I take a seat?”

Silence must count as permission, because Eliot settles on the seat, moving a few take-out containers out of the way to make room. Riggs would laugh at the faint disgust on Eliot’s face if he had it in him to feel real humor just now.

“You here for a reason other than to judge my life?” he asks, and joins Eliot.

“I’m here to see if you want in,” Eliot says. 

“Even though I’m drunk?”

Eliot snorts and pushes a stray strand of hair back from his face.

“I’ve read enough to know that don’t rule you out,” he says. “Shooting a bomb in mid-air? Going to get that kid from those drug-dealers on your own? I’m not saying you’re sane, but I’ve not made it a habit to work with sane much the last few years. Not always worked with sober, either. I’m not saying that last one’s a selling point, but I reckon you can get the job done.”

The stark sincerity in his voice throws Riggs. Sarcasm, outrage, shock, he can deal with. Someone as confident as Eliot flat-out telling Riggs he trusts the skill-set? That one is harder to shake off.

“And what if I’ve decided no? What if I’ve just been waiting for you to show up to arrest you.”

Eliot pulls a face and sits back, stretching in a way that’s grossly unfair and resting his arms along the back of the seat.

“You ain’t reported that part of what I said. Hell, you ain’t reported any of it. The most you’ve done is tell some of it to your partner, and he’s not gone running to your captain. You’re at least thinking about doing it.”

Riggs feels something then. It’s a chill of being out of his depth, and it tugs him enough out of his drifting state that he gets a flash of something else. Anger.

“How do you know that?”

“You ain’t the only person I’m aiming to work with,” Eliot says easily. “I got people who can get me what I need.”

“You think you’re good at this,” Riggs says.

“The best,” Eliot says, with no trace of false pride. No real pride at all. Just fact again. “And don’t go winding yourself up over who it is. None of your team are feeding me anything. I just think you’ll help get this girl home to her momma. And if we get her crooked daddy sent away at the same time, then it’s just a bonus. The chances of that go way up if you’re with me. I can work you into the plan and we can be good to go in the next few days. You don’t want in, just say. I walk away right now and you never see me again.”

Never seeing Eliot again seems like a bad idea, all of a sudden. Eliot’s making no real effort to save or heal him. He’s just offering a job and the sense that it’ll be alongside of someone so competent it won’t matter how reckless Riggs needs to be. Eliot will look after himself. 

“I have to decide right now?” he says. 

However much he likes the idea, there’s the fact it’s not legal, and the fact he’s keeping it from Murtaugh. That feels…wrong. Wrong in a way it wouldn’t have been just those few short weeks ago. He doesn’t look too closely on what that means.

Eliot nods.

“I got plans to set in motion,” he says. His eyes dart to the left, just briefly, and he inclines his head. Something in his expression sharpens. “And we got 48 hours before the guy moves her to another city and we got to start over.”

Riggs considers asking if he knew that already, because he swears Eliot’s listening to someone, and now the guy’s spoken about working with other people, presumably with someone who knows how to listen in to calls or some other sort of snooping, he’s wondering if Eliot’s got a kind of comm on him. 

He knows to anyone who walked in right now, Eliot would seem like the stable one, and he is. Riggs sure as Hell isn’t, that’s a fact. But there’s the small detail that Riggs is not as crazy as he likes people to think, and for all his confidence and his sanity, Eliot was up on that counter with the sword and with the gun, and even if it was something deliberate, something planned, it’s not exactly the sign of someone normal. He thinks Eliot might be more dangerous and more capable of doing something wild than he is, given the right motivation.

So he doesn’t say anything about a comm or a wire, and he doesn’t say anything about wanting to meet the rest of the team first. He can always back out, if he needs to. He might get in trouble over it, if he goes to Avery and tells him he’s been approached by a criminal and left it days to bring it up, but he can do that if he wants to. 

Instead of trying to arrest Eliot, and instead of telling him to clear out, he nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m in.”


	6. 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hardison has an opinion on having Riggs work with them.

Hardison waits until Eliot’s out of the trailer before he says anything else. He can tell from the way Eliot’s been talking, from the pauses and intonation and even from his man’s breathing, that this one is getting to the guy. Normally, it’s Eliot who talks them out of anything that crosses the line into territory even they should think twice about, but every now and then it’s Eliot who goes wild. Kinda like a stealth missile going off, when Eliot does it. 

Sometimes, people wind up under water.

So he leaves it until he’s sure Eliot’s some way down the beach from the suicidal cop with his charming southern accent and steels himself to be the voice of reason.

“Yo, Eliot,” he says. 

“What is it, Hardison?” Eliot asks. His voice is doing that particular kind of raspy thing that it does when the guy’s upset and being all Eliot about it. “You gotta problem?”

“Yeah, I gotta problem. I got you bringing some guy on board who thinks explosions are the answer to all of life’s troubles.”

“They’re a solution to a lot of things,” Parker says from where she’s still making her way out of the mark’s office. The faint clang tells Hardison she’s doing something with a cover, probably just getting out of the air vents. “And Eliot says this Riggs is worth a shot. We already talked about this.”

Yeah, they did. At length. It was one of those conversations where Eliot stepped in and took the lead, giving the impression that anyone else being in charge was always just because he’d decided to let it happen up until then. Normally, Hardison found that hot, but years of trust and years of loving the guy didn’t erase the sinking feeling of disconnection he’d got in that elevator after Eliot gave his real name to Moreau’s men. It’s not that he thinks Eliot’s lying to them. Not at all. It’s more he’s getting the feeling this is one of those times when Eliot’s response is based on some part of himself he hasn’t shared with them. 

It’s a mark of Eliot’s love for them that he shares as much as he does. One way Hardison shows his love is in letting Eliot keep back what he needs to. 

“The guy shot a bomb. In mid-air,” Hardison tries. “You’ve read the reports. Sure, it saved a bunch of people and, yeah, it looks like his partner took the first leap, but you telling me Riggs needed to be in that building in the first place? And who jumps right after someone like that, anyway?”

“I would,” Parker says.

At the same time, Eliot says, “Yeah, he needed to be there.”

Okay. Okay, so what Hardison’s really learning here is that this Riggs is a combination of Eliot and Parker, only with more alcohol involved. So…Nate. If the guy turns out to be good with accents or at writing code, Hardison’s just declaring him Detective Leverage and getting out of town. Except…

“Listen, man,” he tries, even though he’s almost sure this is a waste of his breath, “you said it yourself: Riggs has a death-wish. He ain’t like us. I’m just saying, we should be careful. All right?”

“He ain’t completely different,” Eliot says. “I… He ain’t completely different.”

Parker doesn’t say anything, which either means she’s busy with something or she’s picked up on the tone in Eliot’s voice. She’s been getting a lot better at that. 

“You ain’t Riggs, El,” Hardison says, softening his voice.

“No,” Eliot says. “Riggs got out. He got himself someone he loved and he lost her. Wasn’t exactly my way of coping. You got me there.”

And Eliot’s ear-bud goes dead. 

“Is Eliot upset?” Parker asks a few moments later.

“I don’t know, mama,” Hardison says, tapping his fingers on the desk. 

“He doesn’t really think he’s like Riggs, does he?” Parker asks. “Eliot doesn’t get drunk all the time or try to get killed.”

“Yeah. No. No, you’re right.”

But Hardison can’t help thinking of how Eliot throws himself into danger, and how he used to do it all by himself. He knows why Eliot does it now, he thinks. It’s to keep them safe, and to help people. He wonders what used to go through Eliot’s mind when he was fresh out of the army and working all alone. 

When they were reading over Riggs’ files, over the reports of what happened with Chad Jackson, Eliot said Riggs was identifying, that Riggs needed to save Jackson as much as stop him. Hardison thinks about that as his people make their way back across town to him, Eliot’s phone still pinging out his location so Hardison doesn’t have to worry on that score. He thinks very hard about why exactly Eliot Spencer wants Martin Riggs in on this job.


	7. 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot tells Riggs the next step of the plan.

Riggs looks from the handcuffs to Eliot and back again. They sit there on the bar, right next to a bottle of beer, looking just like…handcuffs.

“You know, if you wanna get kinky, you just have to say,” he tries. “I’m not saying I’m down for anything, but can’t hurt to ask, right?”

An expression crosses Eliot’s face that Riggs really wants time to dissect, but before he can push it the other guy taps the handcuffs with his forefinger and lifts his eyebrows.

“These’ll make it easier,” he says. 

“Well, sure. Handcuffs can make all kinds of fun things easier,” Riggs says, and winks. But playing innuendo chicken with Eliot turns out to be less fun than with Murtaugh, because Eliot doesn’t seem to care. He just stares right back at Riggs, his finger still touching the metal of those cuffs, and waits. Riggs sighs. “You can’t get out of regular cuffs? You disappoint me, Eliot.”

Eliot moves his hand and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“I’d ask what I did to deserve this,” he says, and this time Riggs really does think he’s talking to himself, “but I got a list.” Shaking his head sharply, like he can just throw off his irritation, he fixes Riggs with something partway to a glare. “Listen, this set of handcuffs will come with me all the way through to where I need to be. You hear me? It has to be this set. And don’t go screwing around with them trying to work out why.”

“You could just tell me,” Riggs says. “I’m still a cop. I might be willing to bend the rules a little in the name of liberating a kid from somewhere she shouldn’t be, but I ain’t about to help you blow anything up.”

This time, the edge of Eliot’s lips turns up, so briefly Riggs almost thinks he’s imagining it.

“You don’t seem to have much of an issue blowing things up the rest of the time,” he says.

“Not when it might actually get some innocent bystander hurt,” Riggs says. He feels his smile slipping and bolts it back into place, taking a mouthful of his bourbon as a cover. “Listen, man, I’m not above twisting the rules or running reckless but I stopped the last bomb I came across.”

“So did we,” Eliot says. “More than once.”

We. So, there is a team. And no-one speaks about a team in that soft tone unless it’s a long-time thing. Whoever Eliot works with, whoever he’s keeping back from Riggs, there’s loyalty there. Riggs isn’t stupid enough, or, it turns out, crazy enough to tell Eliot he’s slipped up. Let the man keep thinking Riggs doesn’t know about the team. At least, that he doesn’t know it’s more than a bunch of people Eliot’s put together just for this.

“So, no bomb?” Riggs asks, to be sure. He can just imagine Murtaugh’s face if Riggs helps a bomb go off. Turns out, it isn’t a look he wants to see. “And nothing else that’ll get anyone hurt who doesn’t deserve it?”

“Nothing like that,” Eliot says. “I always aim to minimize any risk to the people who ain’t the mark.”

“Okay,” Riggs says. He probably shouldn’t believe this guy so readily, but he does. There’s that sense of connection he got with Jackson, but without the feeling Eliot’s going to need stopping. With Eliot, that impression of danger is yoked pretty firmly to an equally strong sense of control. Part of Riggs wants to see that control slip, but the part that does worry about people other than himself getting hurt thinks it might be one of the more foolish things he’s ever wished for. “Okay, then. Go over why you want me to arrest you. Could have just done that the other day.”

Eliot shakes his head again, his hair shifting with the movement. Riggs gets a flash of himself holding onto that hair and has to cough to cover his reaction. If Eliot notices, he doesn’t show any sign of it.

“I was never gonna get arrested then,” he says. “Plan is to be seen as a vet who’s not coping. There’s more people preying on those guys than the ones you already put away. And your report got that covered, so we can move on.”

“To stage two?” Riggs asks. “Where I arrest you but have to use those exact cuffs because they’re your security cuffs and you can’t be without them?”

“I’m gonna need you to at least pretend to take this part seriously,” Eliot says, and he sounds way too long suffering for someone who only met Riggs a few days ago. “This is where you march me in so I can get a recent record needing wiped clean. This guy targets people who need that. And I need him to target me so we can get the proof.”

“Which will be helped by having those exact handcuffs?” 

“Yes,” Eliot says, through lips that barely part. 

Riggs is tempted to push it, but he probably shouldn’t get into a fight with Eliot until the job is done. He’s been allowed to see photos of the girl and read up a little on her situation, and she needs out of there yesterday. He won’t risk that.

“Okay,” he says, giving up and sitting back. “Okay, I’ll use the right cuffs. What exactly am I arresting you for? The other day? Because I can go for a chase scene to sell that one.”

“I’m gonna need it to be a bit more than I got time for then,” Eliot says. “Got to hit exactly the right level of messed up to fit this guy’s shopping list. How do you feel about stopping me taking a poor woman hostage?”

“Do I get to be a hero?” Riggs asks, as though he ever gets thanks for the ways he stops shootings and explosions and kidnappings. “Maybe ride in on a white horse?”

“It makes you happy, I’ll call you Lancelot,” Eliot says, and Riggs may never have heard a more sarcastic sentence in his life. “Hmm? That work for you?”

“Oh, buddy,” Riggs says, reaching over to refill his glass, “just about every little thing with you works for me.”

The face Eliot pulls is worth it and Riggs is still laughing when the bartender turns up from wherever the hell he’s been and puts another beer in front of Eliot. It’s just a shame he can’t share what’s going on with his partner, but Murtaugh has a family to think about. Riggs can’t risk this going wrong and getting Murtaugh caught up in something outright criminal. 

The one thing Trish asked of him was that Murtaugh always goes home to her, and Riggs won’t see his partner in prison. Hell, he has no intention of ending up there himself. It’s just, if it comes to it, he’ll find a way to go out in a blaze. He doesn’t even need glory to be part of it.


	8. 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murtaugh is not in on the plan.

Riggs is his usual self on the way to the scene, a little bit snarky and a lot worrying. The guy seems to be almost vibrating with his eagerness to get to the museum where one Ellis Reid is demanding to be taken seriously. The background check has turned up more than one tour and enough in the notes to make Avery call in Cahill.

Murtaugh tries not to get stuck on the fact that Riggs is going up against a vet. The last time was bad enough, but this one has hostages. Potential hostages, anyway. If they spook the guy, if Riggs says or does something to make the already volatile situation worse, they could be looking at the bank thing all over again. 

Not every situation is resolved as easily as the one in the store a few days ago. Well, if easily means Riggs out cold and not answering Murtaugh’s calls, and wasn’t that a fun twenty minutes while they tracked him down and worked out he was still breathing.

“You do get we can’t make this one our friend, right?” Murtaugh asks, as Riggs takes a corner. “This guy has a gun and people in there with him. And no going in and shooting him, either. Seriously, you need to pick another play this time.”

Riggs smirks at him.

“You worry too much, Rog,” he says, and pulls the car to a halt.

Riggs is out of the car and leaving Murtaugh to play catch up in moments, and by the time Murtaugh has joined the group of cops outside the museum Riggs already has hold of a phone.

“He called on that?” Murtaugh asks. “What you gonna do? Ask this one if he wants pizza, too? Yes, I’m talking about the bank. I might never stop talking about the bank. That was some of the craziest-”

He stops as the phone rings. There’s no need for Riggs to hold up his hand like that. Maybe not the best idea to answer it without waiting for Cahill to arrive, either.

“Hey,” Riggs says, “there something I can do for you? I got all the best pizza joints on speed-dial. Just say the word and you can have a steaming hot slice of ham and pineapple in your hand in twenty.”

Murtaugh sees Riggs grin and roll his eyes.

“Okay,” he says, and throws the phone at Murtaugh.

“Hi,” Murtaugh says, pulling a face at Riggs, who shrugs and looks about as apologetic as Riggs ever looks, which is to say not at all. “Not a fan of the pizza theory, then?”

He sees the expression on the face of the beat cop nearby and wants to tell her to try working with Riggs for a few weeks, see how she deals with it. 

“Pizza?” the voice through the phone says. It’s a man, Southern accent and sounding like he wants to tear someone into pieces. “Are you kidding me? I got serious grievances here and you offer me pizza?”

“Okay,” Murtaugh says. He really isn’t properly trained for this. “Okay, sorry. How about you tell me what it is I can do for you, and we all stay nice and calm and peaceful. How about that?”

He looks round for Riggs only to see his partner vanishing up the steps of the museum.

“Oh, hell no,” Murtaugh says.

“What? You talking about hell?” the voice says. “You got no idea about hell.”

“I…? What? No! No, I wasn’t talking to you-”

“Who else you talking to? You think this is some kinda joke? You think I came in here so you could make fun of me? So you could ignore me, talk to someone else? Hmm? Well, boy?”

Riggs slips inside and Murtaugh waves a hand after him as though that will do anything. Some people are enough all by themselves to make him feel like he’s on the verge of another heart-attack at all times. 

“I assure you, no-one is joking about this,” he tries, trying to keep the panic out of his voice at Riggs diving into yet another shooting situation without waiting for backup. “Why don’t you tell me what you need and I’ll see what we can do.”

There’s silence for a while. He’s about to try again when the voice returns.

“You don’t wanna take me seriously, I’ll make you,” he says, and a shot rings through the line. 

It’s followed by a scream, and a shout, and Murtaugh hears Riggs’ voice through the phone. 

“Hey! Hey, there’s no call to shoot that pretty lady,” he says, loud enough Murtaugh can hear him, even if it’s faint and wavering. “How about you and me talk this out? Vet to vet?”

“You think you know what I’m going through?” the shooter asks. Snarls. “You think you know?”

Another shot. Another scream. The phone cuts off.

“Shit!”

Murtaugh is about to go after Riggs when a third shot goes off, and before he can make it to the door it opens and a woman dashes out, her pale hair in disarray. She runs right into Murtaugh and knocks him down, grabbing on to him so that she ends up using him as a landing pad. 

“Hey,” Murtaugh says, scrambling to get himself upright without hurting or scaring her. “Hey, are you okay, miss?”

“Okay?” she asks. She sounds shaken. “Okay? I just got shot at by… Get me out of here!”

And Murtaugh finds himself torn between the need to take care of this civilian and the need to get to Riggs. He doesn’t have to hesitate for long, because the door opens yet again and Riggs is there, pushing a struggling man before him.

The shooter has long hair, falling over his face, and looks about as stable as Riggs on a bad day. Riggs has a bruise developing on his right cheek and is walking with a limp, but the shooter looks at least as rough. 

“Got him,” Riggs says, far too cheerfully for someone who’s marching an attacker along. “You just stay lying down, Rog. Have yourself a nice rest.”

Murtaugh makes it all the way to his feet and helps the woman up, shaking his head and deserving a medal for keeping everything he wants to say safely in his head. He watches as Riggs puts the guy in the back of the car and slams the door shut. He watches as Riggs waves away the man who appears to try and check his cheek. 

“Is it over?” the woman asks. When Murtaugh turns to look at her, she holds out a hand. She does not look as shaken as he’d expected. Tough woman. “Dr Maggie Collins. I expect you’ll be wanting my statement.”


	9. 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riggs takes Elliot to the station.

Eliot doesn’t speak on the way to the station. He sits in the back of the car and looks like he really is exactly what he’s pretending to be. 

Riggs has seen Eliot be steady, seen him be in control, and this angry, shaking mess of a man is almost a shock, even after seeing him that first time with the gun and with the sword. But fist impressions can often be misleading. Seeing someone change so completely after knowing them, even for such a short time as he’s known Eliot, is…well, it makes him think.

For one thing, he thinks about how he must come across to Murtaugh. 

He sees Murtaugh glancing at him, but his partner hasn’t said anything yet, not after telling Riggs the witness will meet them at the station to give a statement. Riggs wonders how shaken up the woman is. Eliot said he’d take steps to minimize any casualties, but when Riggs burst into that room back at the museum, Eliot had Dr Collins be the throat and a gun in her face. He wonders what else Eliot might not consider to be crossing the line. 

It isn’t until they have Eliot in an interview room, handcuffs still in place, that Murtaugh turns to him and shakes his head.

“You have got to stop running right into buildings with gunmen,” he says. “How many is it now? Three? Four? And I’m not even talking about warehouses full of drug dealers. Just plain, straight up places of business. You can stay outside, maybe not risk getting your head blown off. What am I going to tell Trish if you get yourself killed?”

Riggs says something to send his partner off mumbling, but he has time to think the pattern’s a good thing here. So far, no-one has put together that Ellis Reid is the same guy who threatened to shoot up a grocery store. The guy has refused to tell Riggs more than he needs to know, but he gets the plan has had to change. Whatever exactly they were doing with the first go at this, having Riggs interrupt has shifted things. Or opened up new opportunities. 

Now, Riggs heads into the interview room, knowing Avery is out there watching. He’s briefed Eliot on what will happen, but the guy already seems to know a lot about these processes. Riggs flat out asked him if he’s spent time in prison and Eliot offered one of those smiles that’s not a smile and said not in the States. The way he said it made Riggs tread lightly around any further conversation. 

“Ellis Reid?” he asks now, and sees Eliot twitch like he wasn’t expecting the question. In the bar, and in Riggs’ trailer, Eliot gave the impression that every movement was controlled, but here he looks close to jerking out of his own skin. “How about you and me have ourselves a little talk.”

“How about we don’t?” Eliot asks, and even his accent is a little different. His gaze skitters across Riggs and away, and he seems to be keeping an eye on what’s in the corners. “I don’t got nothing to say to you.”

“Would you have something to say to Dr Collins?” Riggs asks. Eliot scowls, and Riggs takes the moment to sit and lean on the table. He keeps the smile on his face, the one he uses to throw people off balance. Eliot was very clear this had to look real. “What part of your grand plan did that involve? Huh? Terrifying an innocent woman. Holding a gun on her? You think she got up this morning and expected that?”

Maybe the bite in his words is a little more than play-acting. 

“People get up all the time and get what they don’t expect,” Eliot says. Ellis says, because that still isn’t the way Eliot’s spoken in their conversations so far. There’s an edge to it that sounds far too close to cracking. Hell, he sounds like a man who’s lost every bit of hope he had and found life can still kick him again. “It ain’t right, man. It ain’t right.”

“We’ve all had bad days,” Riggs says, and manages not to flinch as his own mind shows him a hospital ward, shows him flowers and a toy gun. “Doesn’t mean we get to scare a woman half to death.”

Ellis sneers.

“She’s sitting in there, all dressed up in her suit and with her hair all fancy, not having a clue what it’s like out there,” he says. “You think a rich lady like her knows what a bad day feels like?”

Riggs takes a breath, but before he can say anything else there’s a flash, just a fraction of an instant, where Eliot’s looking at him, and there’s something like regret on his face. Maybe he does feel bad for dragging Dr Collins into this. Riggs isn’t so sure how he feels about letting this play out, not now this has risked traumatizing the woman.

The door opens and he looks away to find Murtaugh staring at him. His partner does not look impressed.

“You need me for something?” Riggs asks. 

“Avery wants to see you,” Murtaugh says. “I’ll keep our Mr Reid company - make sure he doesn’t get lonely all up in here by himself.”

The way Murtaugh looks at Ellis, and it is Ellis again, Riggs would be worried to leave them together if he didn’t know how much more by the book Murtaugh is. He might look like he wants to slap Ellis into a wall, but he won’t do it. 

Outside, Riggs finds Avery and Cahill. Avery has his arms crossed and one of his many unhappy expressions on his face. Cahill looks concerned. She’s holding a file.

“What?” Riggs asks. “You worrying about me in there with the big, bad vet? I’ve got inches on the guy. I could take him. Don’t worry, guys.”

Not that he is so sure he could take Eliot, but they don’t need to know that, and it’s not like it would stop Riggs from trying. Cahill fixes him with a look that says she knows all that and more, which might even be true for all his attempts to avoid telling her anything. 

“This file reads like a nightmare,” she says. “That he’s even walking around and talking is a testament to something. I’m just not sure what.”

“That bad?” Riggs asks. 

He can’t honestly say he paid a lot of attention. Not like he needed the fake information in the file. Eliot wouldn’t tell him who put it together, but no way a guy like that would have his real history out in the open. Riggs isn’t stupid. Far from it. Eliot has got to have a record, if he does anything like this at all regularly. 

“That bad,” Cahill says. “Riggs, this guy was taken prisoner by people who think the Geneva Convention is just a fairytale. That’s on top of the injuries and losing people and… Look, I’m not sure you can talk this one round.”

Riggs ramps up his smile. The point of this is that he interviews Ellis, and that they stall until the guy they know will be coming turns up. He isn’t sure how they know the guy will be coming, but Eliot assured him someone was making certain their target found out about such a suitable candidate for his little scheme at just the right time. Riggs isn’t playing the game with the full set of instructions and he finds he doesn’t like it. 

“I’d say we’re hitting it off,” he says. “I was just about to ask him out for a drink. Maybe take in a show. Know anything good? I’m not really feeling like something with too much dancing in it just now.”

“Dr Cahill will be speaking to Ellis Reid,” Captain Avery says, in the tone that says it’s final, and Riggs can argue all he wants but it won’t change anything. “You can take the statement from Dr Collins. She asked about you. Seems she trusts you after your little stunt in there.”

And Riggs knows he won’t be hearing the last of that, not for a good while. Hell, Avery’s still going on about the bank situation that first day Riggs met Murtaugh, even though there are so many other interesting topics he could focus on. Like why he isn’t the best person to understand an ex-soldier. 

“This guy is not going to open up to a civilian,” Riggs says. 

“You mean like you do?” Cahill asks, her eyebrows raised. “Listen, I’m not going to try and get the guy well. But we need to evaluate him, at least. He can’t be out on the streets like he is, but I don’t want him thrown in prison without help anymore than you do.”

Riggs thinks of the way Eliot’s eyes went when he mentioned being locked in a cell, and he wonders how much of what’s in that file reflects what Eliot really went through. Riggs saw enough, suffered enough, without that. He wonders what drives a man like Eliot to put himself in the hands of the police to save a kid it doesn’t even seem like he knows personally.

“Doc, I mean no offense, you know I don’t, but I just don’t think he’s going to tell you anything.”

Even so, Riggs finds himself watching Cahill walk into that room. Murtaugh doesn’t come out. When Riggs looks a question at Avery, the captain shrugs.

“I’m not saying Murtaugh could stop the guy if he got loose, either, but I feel better with him being in there.”

Riggs isn’t sure Murtaugh would do any better at subduing Eliot than Cahill would on her own. The woman’s smart, and Eliot is way beyond anything he’s seen Murtaugh handle to date. Still, he nods. 

Avery directs him to Dr Collins before Riggs can station himself outside the interview room and watch, and he thinks he does a good job of not letting it show, how much it bothers him. He walked Elliot in here and he doesn’t like letting the guy out of his sight. He isn’t fully sure who he’s trying to protect.

Dr Collins is sitting by his desk, someone’s too-large jacket over her shoulders and a phone in her hand.

“You got someone coming by to pick you up?” Riggs asks. 

“Oh. No,” she says. “I’ll get home just fine.”

“But you have called someone?” Riggs asks, gentling his tone. He forgets, sometimes, that not everyone can shake off having a gun pointed at them like he can. It helps that he never feels safe, and that he wouldn’t know relaxed if it bit him, no matter how much he fakes it. “I imagine you’re plenty shaken up.”

She looks puzzled for a second and glances round. A moment later, she tells him to sit, and he’s taken aback enough that he does just that. She leans in once he’s settled and speaks in a tone that won’t carry.

“Eliot promised me I’d be safe,” she says, “and Eliot always keeps his promises. I was probably safer with him pointing a gun at me than I am just walking down the street.”

There’s certainty in her tone, and once Riggs is over the first flush of surprise he thinks he gets that. What shocks him is the warmth. The affection.

“You and Eliot?” he asks. “You know each other? You’re in on this?”

Dr Collins smiles.

“I admit the first time he tried to pull me into a job, I didn’t know who he was. To be fair, he wasn’t meaning to get me as involved as I got, and he didn’t fool me for long. I’m happy to help them out when they need it.”

Them. There’s that implication of a team again. 

“Right,” Riggs says, and smiles. “It’s cute, him and his team.”

He has no idea, but the way Elliot won’t let Riggs meet them makes him think there’s emotion there, connection, and Dr Collins can always take it as a joke. Instead, she smiles back.

“I know,” she says. “Now, what do you need me to say for this statement? We want Ellis Reid to sound one step away from self-destructing, right?”

By the time Riggs has her statement, she’s insisting he call her Maggie. 

“I’m based in LA for the next few months,” she says. “And I have experience with people who sometimes need to talk. Even Eliot has been known to call me. He’s also told me all the best places to get something to eat, and I always listen to Eliot about food. Let me know if you want to get dinner.”

She must see something in his expression, because her smile softens and she rests her hand on the desk, close enough her fingers are almost touching his arm.

“I don’t mean as a date. Not that I’m against my colleagues thinking it is one. They keep trying to set me up with people. But I really did just mean if you wanted a meal with someone. If Eliot says you’re worth working with, that’s a good enough recommendation for me.”

Riggs isn’t sure what he says to that, but she nods and pats his arm and walks away. That…was not how he expected it to go. At all. He thinks it’s better she was in on the plan than if Eliot really had attacked her, but it’s yet another piece he wasn’t given. He’s starting to wonder what he still doesn’t know.

When Avery tells him Ellis Reid has been taken away by the FBI, he isn’t even sure whether he should be worried.


	10. 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trish and Roger discuss Riggs.

Trish waits until the kids are up in bed before she asks Roger what’s wrong. He’s been distant and jumpy, which these days pretty much means a case is bugging him or Riggs is. 

She knows her husband. He can complain about Riggs all he wants, but he cares about the guy. He worries. She’s gotten to know Riggs well enough by now that she worries, too. No-one should lose their wife or kid that way. Or at all, but the sudden ripping away of a loved one…

She didn’t lose Roger, and she needs to remember that. She didn’t lose him, and Riggs promised to make sure her husband came home to her. 

“Is it a case?” she asks. “Or Riggs?”

There’s time for a sip of wine before Roger stops pulling a face and answers her. He frowns and she sets down her glass. This isn’t just Riggs exhibiting disgusting eating habits or singing a random song or walking along a ledge instead of attending a briefing. Roger’s really concerned.

“I think, maybe, Riggs is getting in too deep in something,” he says. 

“As in…death-wish deep?” she asks, carefully. 

Roger doesn’t really keep secrets from her, even if sometimes he pretends he’s going to, even to himself, but he already has a loyalty to Riggs and sometimes slips away from any discussion of his partner’s real mental health. It’s one of the ways she knows it’s serious.

“As in… You remember I told you about the shooter in the store?”

She nods. She remembers a lot being said about that, and she remembers the way Riggs tried to laugh it off. He’d looked a little more glazed than normal, and she hadn’t been sure whether it was being knocked out or something else.

“You know he saw the guy later?”

“Hell, yes, I do. Wait. You don’t think there’s more to it?”

Roger shakes his head and grimaces. 

“Not only did he not get him, he had a drink with him. Sat down, at a bar, and let the guy buy him an actual drink. And didn’t report it to anyone. That sound like something that just goes away?”

“He just let a gunman go,” Trish says. “I suppose we got to ask why. Has there been anything making you think he’s seen the guy since? Wait, is this some brothers-in-arms thing? Didn’t Riggs say the guy looked like he could be a vet? The way he moved or held the gun or something?”

Roger doesn’t answer right away. He fiddles with his glass, looking unhappy.

“Honey,” Trish says, “if you think he’s in trouble, you should talk to Avery. Or Cahill. It could be a sign he’s closer to the edge than you thought.”

Than they thought. She isn’t sure how Riggs would feel about the fact they discuss him, or if he’s noticed the fact that he’s invited over for a meal at times when he’s worried Roger the most.

“The thing is,” Roger says, after taking a large drink of his wine, “there was another shooter today. Definitely a vet. Definitely a shooter. And Riggs went in and arrested him, just like that. And, yeah, he’s done crazy shit like that before, but I just…”

“You think it’s the same man?” Trish asks. 

“Hell of a coincidence he’d run into two vets with Southern accents in the same week, right?”

Trish frowns.

“LA seems to be overrun with Southerners just now,” she says. “Had a guy come by my office the other day. An assistant for some firm back out in Boston, of all places. Now he was Southern. Very charming. He had the best hair.”

“You saying it’s some Southern invasion?” Roger asks. 

It does seem like a strong coincidence, but Riggs wouldn’t put innocent people at risk. She doesn’t think. He understands loss too well to wish it on someone else.

“If you’re worried, you need to talk to someone,” she says. “Maybe give him a chance to tell you himself.”

Roger nods and finishes his wine, and she doesn’t ask him why he hasn’t been to Avery about Riggs sharing a drink with a gunman. Not yet.   
‘


	11. 11

Riggs turns up to work with a pounding headache the next morning. By the time he got back to the trailer he was several drinks down. He didn’t quite mean to be, but his part in this is done, and he’s been left with the uncomfortable feeling of something trailing away undone. In theory, he should know if it works, because the mark’s life will explode over the next few days, but that’ll be all he knows. So…drinking. He never quite got to the fighting stage and he thinks he resents it.

Eliot hasn’t even made it clear he’ll contact Riggs again, leaving him with Maggie as his only source of information. He isn’t sure how he feels about going to her. 

He’s leaning on one hand at his desk, picking up his phone for the fourth time in an hour, not even sure who he’s meaning to call, when a shadow falls over him and he looks up to see a blond woman in a dark suit, dark glasses over her eyes. 

“You hungover?” he asks, and doesn’t add the ‘too’. From the way he’s squinting, he’ll be surprised if she can’t just tell. 

She tilts her head and pulls the glasses from her face, staring at him as though he makes no sense.

“No,” she says, and that seems to be the end of that. 

Riggs sighs. He isn’t up to dealing with crazy. He’s feeling jittery over his part in Eliot’s plan. Now the guy’s not around to tempt him into anything, it all seems less logical, less necessary. And he hasn’t missed the way Murtaugh’s been throwing him odd looks.

“Can I help you with something?” he asks. 

She nods, and pulls a badge from her pocket. FBI.

“Special Agent Hagen,” she says.

“Okay.” Riggs straightens up and tries a smile. It’s maybe fifty percent functional, and it seems to have no effect on her whatsoever. “Can I help you with something, Agent Hagen?”

Riggs is used to charming or confusing his way through most interactions these days, and he gets that his sarcasm can get on people’s nerves. It’s why he uses it. Irritated people tend to avoid him. So negative reactions don’t bother him. The almost total lack of any reaction from this woman throws him.

She frowns at him after a moment, just a faint wrinkling of her brow, and pulls out a pad of paper and a pen. Flipping the pad open, she fixes him with a look that must make most of humankind want to comply.

“I need information on a man you arrested yesterday,” she says. “We have reason to believe he’s linked to other cases we’re pursuing.”

Eliot. Or Ellis. It was a slow day yesterday, and Riggs only arrested the one guy. 

“Sorry, Agent,” he says. “Afraid you must have your wires crossed. Ellis Reid was picked up by your people before I left work yesterday. You not been talking to your own people?”

Something like annoyance flashes across her face and she writes something down.

“I’m going to need the names of those agents,” she says. “And I need to know how Mr Reid seemed as they took him. Did he protest? Ask for help?”

Now, Riggs is curious. He stands, crossing his arms and looking down at this Agent Hagen. 

“Can’t say that I know,” he says. “Didn’t see it. You’d have to speak to my colleagues about that. Why? You got reason to believe there was something wrong with these agents?”

They can’t really have been FBI, he thinks. Eliot was sure that he’d be removed from custody by someone sent by the mark, and pretty confident he’d be wearing the cuffs Riggs put on him when he was. That doesn’t answer why the real FBI would be here, or why they’d be asking if Eliot, if Ellis, was distressed. 

Hell, Eliot’s a damn fine actor, it turns out. He could have kicked up a fuss to sell the bit and it might mean nothing at all.

“You didn’t have your eye on him at all times?” she asks. “Detective Riggs, this man is unstable and has been involved in more than one crime since he left the army. You have seen his file?”

That file again. Riggs really is going to have to start reading what’s put in front of him, even if it is a false file.

“I’ve seen it,” he tells her. “Look, I know the guy’s dangerous, all right? I caught him with a gun to a woman’s face. I did my bit. He was angry when I brought him in, but he wasn’t asking for help. Afraid I can’t tell you any more.”

He can’t decide if telling the FBI is backing Eliot or not. For all he knows, the plan involves the real FBI turning up and being suspicious.

She writes something else down and insists on being directed to his boss, and Riggs finds himself watching Agent Hagen talk to Avery. He can’t be sure what’s being said, because he’s sent out and has to watch through the glass. He has to pretend he isn’t watching, too. Still, Avery looks angry as the conversation goes on, and Agent Hagen leaves with a pinched expression and a collection of paperwork.

“Problem?” Riggs asks Avery when the captain emerges. Riggs is used to the expression on the guy’s face, but he isn’t used to it being aimed at anyone other than him.

“She seems to think we let an unstable and dangerous criminal walk out of here without reason,” Avery says. “You blowing things up is something I’ve almost gotten used to, but being accused of letting dangerous men wander out is just a wonderful addition.”

“And did Ellis say anything to suggest he thought he was in danger by going with them?” Riggs asks, because that’s been nagging at his mind. 

“Ellis?” Avery asks. “I didn’t know you were on first name terms.”

And Riggs is left with the unsettling feeling that the loose threads of this case have snagged on something he can’t quite see.


	12. 12

Cahill has most of a cupcake in her mouth when Riggs walks in. She stares at him as he pauses, pushing his hair back in a way that does nothing to make it any neater, and glances around the room. The smile he’s trying out is a long way from his best, and he doesn’t seem quite able to decide on how strong it should be. 

She starts chewing again as she waits to see what’s going on. With Riggs, it’s often best to survey the situation before making any assumptions. He’s as liable to explode as those bombs he seems so gifted at finding. 

When he swallows and settles on a mid-range smile, a touch charming and more amiable than she’s foolish enough to believe, she gestures to the seat opposite her. By the time he’s sat down, she’s finished with her snack and is sipping on her coffee.

“Have I forgotten a session?” she asks. She hasn’t. Of course she hasn’t. But there’s always the outside chance he’s decided he needs to talk and that framing it as part of his mandatory sessions will enable him to start speaking more easily. There’s also a chance he’ll have turned up to say something sarcastic, flirt with her in a way that’s purely defensive, and leave again with no progress having been made. “I’d have brought you a cupcake, too.”

“I’ll get one next-time,” Riggs says, and shifts on the seat, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. Far more attentive than he normally is. Far more present and engaged. “You interviewed Ellis, yesterday. Ellis Reid. The shooter.”

Ellis. First name before the full name. Interesting. Riggs has been known to form bonds with people before. Usually, it’s people he sees as being as aspect of himself, or those he feels the need to protect: aspects of Miranda. But he also reacts with brutal efficiency when someone risks others, and this Ellis Reid didn’t have the same sort of ‘mission’ as the last suspect he became invested in. 

“I spoke with him,” she says. “Has something else happened with the case?”

Avery has already told her about the FBI calling today, but she’s still working on getting Riggs to talk to her. Giving her basic information on events he isn’t responsible for is a start.

“I’m worried something might be off about this,” Riggs says. “How’d the guy seem to you?”

That, right there, is Riggs being sincere. He genuinely wants to know about this man he stopped from putting a bullet through a woman’s face. Cahill leans back and keeps watch of his expression as she talks. 

“He’s hyper-vigilant,” she says. “His eyes barely stayed on one thing for more than a few seconds at a time. He’s paranoid, convinced people are after him. And he expressed anger, but there was something strange about it.”

“Strange how?” Riggs asks.

She shrugs. She’s by no means sure of this part. The man in front of her in that interview room was every bit the angry, struggling almost-shooter she’d been told to expect. But there was something that made her think he was steadier than that, and more dangerous, and she isn’t sure which impression she should believe. It was fleeting, and it wasn’t enough to change her recommendation to Avery about the man’s mental state, and in any case she’s certain of the PTSD, as far as she can be from spending less than an hour with him before the FBI arrived and took him away.

She says as much to Riggs, more or less, and he blinks. Something in that has hit him.

“He talk much about his past?” Riggs asks. “About what’s in his file?”

Cahill shakes her head.

“Strangely, he didn’t feel like telling me all the details.”

“Well,” Riggs says, and smiles. It’s stronger this time. “Not everyone’s as sharing as me.”

“What are you worried about?” she asks, stepping around that for now. There are times to indulge him in his attempts to outsmart her, and this isn’t one of them. “You think we missed something?”

Riggs grimaces. It’s a momentary shift from his smile and an instant later it’s like he never dropped his mask. He stands and every line of him makes it clear he isn’t staying much longer, no matter what she says. This isn’t going to turn to him.

“Got the feeling the guy might have been keeping something back, is all,” he says. “Wondered if you had any insight.”

Cahill sighs.

“Look, all I got was what he’d already shown you. He wouldn’t explain himself any further and he only dropped vague hints about his past trauma. Enough to make me able to give an initial diagnoses, but nothing more.”

“He seem worried to you? Surprised by anything?”

“More resigned,” she says. “Still angry, though. If you want more from me, you’re going to have to tell me what you’re thinking. Perhaps I can help.”

She knows it’s futile before he waves her off and takes a step to the door.

“Nah, doc. Don’t worry about it. I’m just a curious guy. I’ll see you for our next session.”

Which she doesn’t believe for a minute. She can count the times he’s turned up without being chased on one hand. Still, even if Ellis Reid wasn’t worried, Riggs is. She’s going to need to think about that.


	13. 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riggs can't leave without Murtaugh coming too.

Murtaugh catches Riggs just as he’s about to get in his truck.

“You going somewhere, partner?” Murtaugh asks. “We got a case I don’t know about? Because last time I checked, it was still the middle of the workday, so probably not the best time to be leaving.”

“I’ve got an errand to run,” Riggs says. “You can’t cope without me for an hour? You threw yourself out of a window, Rog. Think you can handle a little paperwork.”

“You know what?” Murtaugh says, after a pause just long enough Riggs thinks he might be getting away with it. “I think I’ll come along. I could do with some air.”

Riggs knows Murtaugh well enough that he gives in. There’s a look the guy gets when he’s going to do his thing, no matter what, and Riggs could handcuff his partner to something, but he’s pretty sure doing it here will lead to time being taken out of his day when he gets back, and he might need to move quickly. He needs to get on top of this Eliot situation, though, and no way will he be able to keep Murtaugh from noticing anything. 

He’s going to have to ditch him somewhere. Or tell him what’s going on. 

“Sure,” he says. “Hop on in. We’ll go pick up groceries together. I think Trish said to get your favorite yogurt, and I can’t remember what kind she said to buy. One with cartoons on the side?”

“You running errands for my wife, now?” Murtaugh asks. “Because there’s a whole lawn needs mowing, if you want to do chores that bad. We can get you set up, show you how to use the thing that makes the lawn all stripy. The neighbors love the lawn to look all stripy.”

Murtaugh mimes something that’s probably meant to be stripes and slides his way right up to the door. He’s in the passenger seat before Riggs has the engine running.

Riggs keeps part of his attention on what Murtaugh’s saying as they set off, but mostly he just nods and throws in the odd remark. He needs to work out how he’s going to do this without dragging Murtaugh into this whole mess with him. The guy didn’t choose to work with someone he first met holding up a store.

Walking into a bank being held up… Well, no. No, Murtaugh didn’t choose to work with that guy, either. But he’s stuck with it, and he’s had Riggs round to his home, and despite their run-ins on a couple of points, it’s been starting to feel a little bit like belonging. 

“Rog,” Riggs says, “you might want to step out of this one.”

He doesn’t look over at his partner, but the way the guy shuts up says a lot. 

“What?” Murtaugh asks when they’re another block down the road. “Step out of what, Riggs? You got something going on I should know about?”

Riggs smiles. 

“When do I ever have anything going on? I’m the kind of guy to sit at home and knit scarves, you know that. Maybe crochet a few socks. That’s about all I have going on.”

And he knows he’s decided to tell Murtaugh at least some of it, because no way will his partner believe he’s meant to be deterred by that. When he glances over, it’s to find Murtaugh watching him, no trace of humor on his face. 

“What is it?” Murtaugh asks. “This something about that guy you had a drink with?”

Of course Murtaugh’s worked that bit out. The guy’s an excellent detective, and at this very point in his life, Riggs thinks Murtaugh might know him as well as anyone does. He doesn’t look too closely at what that implies, that a guy who’s known him hardly any time at all, with no experience of war or of the type of loss Riggs has been through, who grumbles and argues and worries, is about the closest friend he’s got left. 

Riggs is sure there were people, back before the accident, who knew him. He isn’t sure where they slipped away to.

“Yeah,” he says, and by now the smile is nothing more than habit. “Yeah, it is. Come on. I know a bar we need to check out. I’ll explain it when we get there.”


	14. 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murtaugh finds out what's going on.

The bar Riggs takes him to is quiet. It’s dark wood and low light and one guy sitting near the back of the room, nursing a shot of something. The bartender nods at Riggs like he knows him and slides a bottle over without being asked. Riggs takes it.

“Hey, hey,” Murtaugh says, throwing out a hand. “We’re on duty. Why’d we even have to come to a bar? Is this…is this where you had that drink with the guy? Is that why we’re here? Because I don’t know if you noticed, but he’s been picked up by the FBI. He’s not our business anymore.”

Riggs fills the two glasses the bartender sets out and sits himself down at the bar, downing his drink as he goes. He drinks a second before he looks over and pats the bar.

“Sit down, Rog. You don’t have to drink. And if you feel you have to report me after this, I understand. I do. Just…sit.”

For a moment Murtaugh considers turning right around and walking out. Riggs has done all kinds of shit since they started working together, and he’s found himself following right along. Hell, he’s the one who shot through a window and leaped out into thin air. He’d never have done that before meeting Riggs. Still, there’s never needed to be a drink at a bar to introduce an idea before. He finds himself wondering just how much trouble Riggs has gotten himself into now.

Riggs doesn’t tell him anything to start with. He has a third drink and holds the empty glass dangling from his fingertips, looking far too close to falling. Murtaugh waits him out. He knows how to be quiet when he needs to be. 

Eventually, Riggs shakes his head and grimaces. 

“I think I might have got in too deep on this one, Rog,” he says. That might even be regret in there, or concern.

“To deep into what?” Murtaugh asks. He keeps his voice low. The bartender isn’t that far away and there’s still that one other guy in here. “We talking breaking the law bad? Because you know you should have reported seeing that gunman again. You shouldn’t have sat here and had a drink with him. But he’s away now. Right? It is the same guy.”

He isn’t totally sure until he sees’ Riggs nod. In theory, there could be two men from a similar part of the country in on this together, and Riggs might just have had a drink with one of them. Stranger things and all that. 

“It’s the same guy. Yeah.”

Riggs doesn’t seem happy about it. After a moment, he closes his eyes and drops his head forward.

“Then the problem’s gone away,” Murtaugh says. “Look, I don’t approve, but you stopped him. He should have been behind bars already, but you stopped him. No-one got hurt. Dr Collins is probably a lot more shaken up than she ever needed to be, but it could have been a lot worse.”

“Dr Collins was never in any real danger,” Riggs says, and sounds like he means it. 

“No…? Riggs, she had a gun in her face. All right, you stopped him, but he had a gun in her face.” 

He gestures at his own face in case that helps Riggs to get it, but his partner just opens his eyes and shrugs. 

“What can I tell you? Eliot wasn’t gonna hurt her. And I get the feeling if he decides to hurt you, you end up hurt.”

“How is that reassuring?”

And Eliot? Who the hell is Eliot?

“Because that’s the kind of guy who only hurts you if he’s decided to. Safer than most of the guys out there, long as you don’t end up on the wrong list.”

“Would that be the ‘getting shot in the face’ list?”

Riggs pours a fourth drink.

“You think you ought to slow down there?” Murtaugh asks. 

This time, Riggs laughs. It’s dry and bitter and has an edge to it Murtaugh really doesn’t like.

“Pretty sure the time to slow down was before I helped a guy who can take me out in seconds plan a con,” Riggs says, and starts to explain.

Ten minutes later, Murtaugh takes that drink.


	15. 15

Murtaugh doesn’t get up and leave right away, so there’s that. He also doesn’t call Avery. He just stares at Riggs.

“You’re gonna have to say something, Rog,” Riggs tries. The bourbon is blurring some of the edges, but he’s been using this method for too long and it takes more than he’s had so far for him to really soften the hurt. He still feels the fracture lines running all through him and he still feels the discomfort that has him wanting to be out of his own skin. This worry over Eliot is just layered on top of the usual. “I can’t read your mind.”

“Good job,” Murtaugh says. “Because if you could read my mind, you wouldn’t want to be sitting anywhere near me.” He blinks and shakes his head. “It was a set-up? That whole thing was planned? And you were in on it? Why?”

“I explained-”

“No, you said some guy you met at the end of a gun lured you to this bar like some Pied Piper of crazy and you followed him. That isn’t a reason, Riggs. That’s evidence you need a babysitter.”

“There’s a good reas-”

“There is no good reason for what you did!”

The silence in the bar deepens after Murtaugh’s outburst and Riggs wonders where the bartender’s got to. He must be someone Eliot trusts to be discreet, or else chronically uninterested in what he hears, because no way would a man like Eliot risk someone spilling his plans. He can’t speak for the guy over in the back.

“A girl needs pulling out of something bad, Rog,” he says, softly. “I couldn’t let a girl stay hurting if I could save her. Help save her.”

He sees the moment Murtaugh gets it. Hell, in some ways he still wishes Murtaugh didn’t know, that none of them knew about his Miranda. And not that she was a girl in the way this one Eliot’s set on saving is: Miranda held her own. She didn’t need saving. The accident wasn’t something he could predict. It wasn’t the kind of thing he could have saved her from. 

“Riggs…” Murtaugh says on a sigh.

“I know,” he says, because he doesn’t want to hear it. “Just…I need to find out what’s happening.”

“And you really don’t know if this is part of the plan?” Murtaugh asks. 

Riggs is about to reply when another voice does it for him, a deeper and younger voice. 

“It was the plan,” the bartender says, leaning on the bar in a way that makes his lack of interest before obviously fake. “Now? Not so much.”

Murtaugh makes an indignant noise, but Riggs is too busy staring at the guy to pay attention. 

“You’re part of his crew?” he asks at last. “That why he felt safe here?”

A tilt to the guy’s lips suggests Riggs has said something adorable, but it slips away in an instant, back into an intensity that would worry anyone who cared about his own well-being. 

“Eliot don’t feel safe anyplace,” the guy says. “Man’s paranoid. Don’t mean there’s many people can take him. We’ve come up against a couple that got close, but far as I know one of them’s on a job in Geneva and the other one was meant to be meeting us in LA, only he never showed up.”

“Quinn,” Riggs says.

He searched for that name, too, back after he first ran into Eliot, but he never found anything concrete. Nothing to tell him why a man with enough combat experience to put Riggs out might get the two of them mixed up.

“Yeah,” the bartender says. “Quinn.” He shakes his head and whistles. “Gotta say, man. I thought Eliot might have taken a break from reality when he said you looked alike, but you are the spitting image of Mr Quinn. You sure you don’t have a twin brother, now? Or is one of you some from some freaky alternate universe? Which one of you is the evil version?”

Riggs tips his head to the side and frowns. He can’t help the smile that creeps up at the same time. By this point, he isn’t sure how much of his crazy act is an act.

“We look the same?” he asks, knowing he sounds somewhere between confused and delighted, no matter what he really feels about this.

“Well…” The guy shrugs and waves his hand over his own head. “Looks like you went more for the Eliot school of hair-care, except I’ve never seen my man with his hair so messed up. You really rocking that dragged through a hedge by wild horses vibe, huh?”

This time, the noise Murtaugh makes might be partly a laugh, but running through the atmosphere is the underlying tension of people worrying about their own. This bartender’s shoulders are tense and the joking sounds like reflex. Riggs would know.

“You got a name?” he asks. 

“I got several,” the guy says. “But Eliot told you his name, so I guess I can do the same.” He sticks out a hand, an air of defiance in the gesture. “The name’s Hardison. Now, I thought maybe you were the weak link turned on Eliot, but that’s been checked out and far as I can see, you’re clean. And now you’ve come looking for him, too. So, you in? You gonna help me find my man?”

The way he says that… Riggs nods and takes the hand, grasping it firmly.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’ll help you find him.”

Murtaugh still hasn’t spoken, but Riggs has no intention of being stopped here. He couldn’t save Miranda, but maybe he can stop this Hardison from losing the person he loves.


	16. 16

Hardison releases Riggs’ hand and nods to Murtaugh, who looks far too spooked for anyone’s good. A cop with morals and a sense of duty is all well and good, but not when it includes following official policy instead of what’s best for the situation.

Eliot seems to have been right about Riggs: the guy’s turned up because he’s invested, however far that might stretch. But this partner of his could well leap the wrong way and Parker isn’t in house to back Hardison up right now. 

“Hey,” Hardison says. “You look like you got questions.”

“Yeah, I got questions,” Murtaugh says. 

He shifts on his seat, and it isn’t at all clear whether he’s about to bounce up off of it and leave, or if he’ll drag Riggs with him when he does. Try to, anyway. Eliot took Riggs down in that store, but from what Hardison’s looked up and from the rant Eliot went on about training methods and noticeable stances and all, Riggs is quite the brawler. Still, a cop even trying to drag his buddy cop out of the bar will be enough to cause problems. For one thing, Riggs is now the closest thing to a hitter they have on this, and they might need him. 

“Ask away, my man,” Hardison says, taking a small step back and spreading his arms. “Open book, that’s me.”

Maybe written in code and rigged with every booby trap known to humankind, but open. The guy can ask. Pissing off cops is a lot less fun when Eliot isn’t around to get him out of it.

“Why are two adult men wanting to get a teenage girl away from her father?” Murtaugh asks. 

Hardison feels his mouth open on nothing. 

“Wh…what?” he asks, after double-taking for a while. “You…? What are you implying? You think Eliot or me would…? Na-huh. No way. We are strictly about saving people, about helping them. The girl’s mother asked us for help. Okay? But, hey, you want to check we’re above board, you feel free to stick around and help us out. Whole plan might have gone sideways, here. Getting it back on track is our number one objective.”

“Eliot’s gone missing, hasn’t he?” Riggs asks, and it’s creepy, the way the guy smiles all the damned time, even though he clearly doesn’t find it amusing.

Hardison’s finding a new appreciation for Eliot’s scowls. His man smiles, sure, but not like the thing’s been stapled to his face and it’s hurting him. That hair needs looking at, too. If Hardison had his way, he’d let Parker pin the guy and shear most of that hair clean off. His Nana’s neighbor had a dog once, a real shaggy thing that could barely see through it’s own fur, and Riggs’ hair’s giving him the feeling he’s about to get barked at or bitten, no matter how far the lips curve up. 

“There is a chance the plan has encountered something in the way of a wrinkle, yes,” he admits. 

“Not real FBI?” Riggs asks. “Because we had an FBI agent turn up asking questions earlier today, and she seemed mighty interested in your Ellis Reid. You use a file from a real vet?”

Hardison hasn’t wanted to think too closely on that one. He faked everything up, but he used information Eliot handed to him, written out in the hitter’s neat script, and he didn’t summon the courage to ask if Eliot drew from his own life, or rather how closely, before they lost the guy on comms. 

“Ellis Reid is made up,” he says, because that bit is true. He isn’t ready to admit Agent Hagen is only a little less fictional. Eliot said Riggs was in, and they agreed, because Eliot asks for far too little as it is, but that doesn’t mean Hardison is about to spill every secret to the man. Coded book. “But, yeah, maybe my hacking skills made him seem really real. Problem isn’t the guys who took Eliot are fake. We knew they would be. Problem is that Eliot stopped speaking to us about an hour after he was taken, and his ear-bud died, far as I can make out. He’s meant to be back by now, with the girl and the files we need to shut the mark down. So…wrinkle.”

Murtaugh makes a noise Hardison’s Nana used to make and shakes his head.

“Not a wrinkle,” he says. “A wrinkle’s where your shirt comes out of the closet and it’s been pressed up against all the other shirts funny and it’s got a line down it, or it’s been all crushed up in a bag and it’s not flat and straight like it should be. That’s a wrinkle. What you have here is not a wrinkle. This is a case of the shirt dragging a cop into an illegal action, shooting up a museum and then going missing. I don’t know what that’s called, but it isn’t a damned wrinkle.”

Murtuagh’s hands move as he speaks, chopping at the air and making arcs. 

“Bottom line is,” Hardison says, because he hasn’t got time to wind Murtaugh up, even though the guy looks like he needs about a month of being made to lighten up before he can hold a decent conversation, “we need to find Eliot and we need to get him back. But we also need to get the girl out. I need more people on this. You in?”

He looks at Riggs, but he keeps Murtaugh in the corner of his eye. Riggs tracked Eliot here that first time, and the fact Eliot meant for it to happen doesn’t change the fact the man came. He’s come back again, more than once, and this time it’s all on his own and because he wants answers. If he intended on bringing the law down on Eliot, he’d have done it by now. 

Murtaugh, though… Murtaugh could still be a problem.

Riggs nods.

“Yeah. I’m in. Where do we start? Because I can go and shake some information from the mark. Just say the word.”

Hardison sees something of Parker in this one, sees some of that restless need to be doing she can get sometimes, and he’s under no illusions, here. Riggs will be off on what he thinks needs doing whether Hardison says yes to it or not, unless he can be guided right. 

Before Hardison can get to the guiding, Murtaugh slaps his hand on the bar.

“No,” he says. “No more of this, Riggs. You’re coming with me to Avery and we’re going to get this sorted out. We’ll talk to Cahill. She’ll vouch for you. This is some PTSD thing. You need help, man. And going off chasing after this…this hacker isn’t going to help you.”

“I ain’t going to Avery,” Riggs says. He turns his head to look at his partner and the set of his body says he’s going to be hell to move, if anyone tries. 

“You said I could do what I needed to do,” Murtaugh says. “You said after I listened, I could do what I had to do. This is what I have to do. So come on. You can still pull back from this.”

Riggs’ smile is twisted. 

“I said I’d understand you trying,” he says, tilting his head. “Didn’t say I’d let you do it.”


	17. 17

Riggs isn’t going to fight Murtaugh. Not unless he has to. The guy’s his friend, a better one than he has any right to expect, maybe, even if he has taken a cattle prod for the man. Still, he isn’t leaving here except to help bring Eliot back and to finish the mission. 

If it ends his career, so be it. Like he’s said before, it ain’t much of one, and he’s going to tip over the edge of what his father-in-law can save him from at some point, anyway. Might as well be to save a guy who wants to save a teenage girl. 

Riggs doesn’t know when Eliot got out, but there’s a chance they could have ended up in the same sandbox, at one time or another, and even if they were never over there at the same time, there’s that feeling he gets around the man, that feeling here is someone who sees him. Eliot probably gives everyone that sense. The man’s got a piercing glare. 

Still, Riggs is going to bring Eliot back to Hardison. Murtaugh can do whatever he needs to do, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of that.

His partner’s jaw firms and he looks like five different scripts run through his head before he says anything else. 

“You want to throw everything away?” he asks. “Riggs, come on. This is bad, but we can talk to Cahill. We can get you help. You can’t expect me to let you go off with this man and make it worse.”

“I can expect you to let me do what I think is right,” Riggs says. “Come on, Rog. You know me. Don’t make me handcuff you to this bar.”

“Who are we handcuffing to what, now?” a voice asks from behind him, and Riggs spins on his barstool to find Agent Hagen standing behind him.

Only, she doesn’t look so much like an agent, now. Her hair is loose and she’s wearing a black outfit that looks like she’s mainly interested in being invisible in shadows. She also has a taser, held casually enough in the hand that’s slightly behind her for most people to miss it. The smile on her face is unsettling.

“Hey, baby,” Hardison says. “Detective Riggs wants to help us find Eliot. Detective Murtaugh has his reservations.”

“He wants Eliot to stay missing?” Hagen asks, narrowing her eyes and turning to glare at Murtaugh, who leans back. “Why does he want our Eliot to stay missing? He have something to do with it? Well, does he?”

She steps closer to Murtaugh and leans in. 

Before Riggs can pull her away, Hardison chips in.

“Nah, mama, He’s just worried about his friend, is all. Don’t want us corrupting his partner, here. Getting him all in trouble.”

“Oh,” she says, and steps back. “Are you going to be a problem?” she asks Murtaugh.

“You people are crazy,” Murtaugh says. 

Riggs sees the woman’s face shut down and steps in hurriedly.

“I get that you’re worried,” he tells his partner. “And it’s touching. It is. But I’m doing this, so you either try to arrest me, you leave me here and go make a report if you need to, or you join us. Only one of those means you get to keep an eye on me.”

He sees Murtaugh glance from him to Hagen to Hardison, the look on his face far from convinced.

“Besides,” Riggs says. “This here is Agent Hagen. Looks like they’ve got the FBI on their side.”

He sees the way Hardison’s eyebrows lift at that, but Murtaugh isn’t looking that way anymore.

“Yes,” Hagen says, her tone serious. “That’s me. Special Agent Hagen. This is an FBI case.”

Riggs looks at her in time to see her nod, and he gets that feeling he got earlier, like she’s here to punish him for throwing people off balance all these months. Taste of his own medicine wrapped up in a woman he’d have chased after when he was younger. Before Miranda. 

“Of course,” he says, and stands, pushing his hair back and grinning. “Not too usual for an FBI agent to be involved with a hacker. And you do know he’s also involved with your Eliot?”

“Well, of course he is, silly,” Hagen says, as though she can’t imagine why any of this is being brought up.

So, either she isn’t FBI, or Eliot’s got an actual agent on his team. And maybe in his bed, from the vibe he’s picking up from the pair of them. Given he’s got Riggs here, it’s not impossible. The FBI agent on the team thing. Eliot’s made no attempt to get Riggs into bed. 

Murtaugh must still be processing everything else, because he doesn’t seem to have noticed it, yet. Riggs has no intention of pushing it further. Not if it means Murtaugh steps down and lets Riggs work this.

“FBI?” Murtaugh asks. His gaze shifts to Riggs and back to Hagen. “I suppose I can report back to Avery that you’re working with the FBI on this.”

Ah. That’s a tone he’s heard before. Murtaugh isn’t entirely sold on it, but somewhere in all his processing he’s decided this is an out he can take. It happens sometimes, and Riggs isn’t going to question it.

“That you can,” Hardison says, warmly approving, appearing from behind the bar. 

And Riggs finds himself standing between a hacker and a woman who might or might not be an agent, but who is definitely someone who comes at the world from an angle, all prepared to go on a mission to rescue a man more dangerous than he is. A man they both seem to be involved with.

He’s had worse days.


	18. 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's Eliot.

Eliot shudders awake. He’s groggy, spaced, the edges of his awareness feeling like they’re spinning out into the distance. Drugs. They’ve drugged him. 

They weren’t supposed to do that. 

Then again, they weren’t supposed to do most of the things that have happened in the last few hours. He thinks hours. Maybe weeks. Fuck if he knows, at this point. That should worry him more than it does, he thinks, but even caring about that slips away from him. 

There’s no noise around him, except the distant sound of traffic. He can’t work out how far away and that’s…odd. No-one comes at him to check he’s awake, and the light falling on his eyelids seems natural, but low. He pries open one eye and squints as pain stabs at him. Right. Keeping his eyes closed for a while, then. 

He swallows, finding his mouth and throat dry, and the pounding in his head might be down to dehydration as well as drugs. It takes effort to force himself to action, and moving his hands, getting one up to his scalp and feeling at the skin under his hair, takes long enough he forgets why he’s doing it. Right. He’s checking his head. A lump. There’s a lump…maybe from where someone hit him? 

More thoughts clump together to offer the conclusion: concussion. As well as drugs, he’s concussed. 

“You doing all right there, buddy?” a voice asks him. 

He freezes, his eyes still shut and his body still curled up shivering on whatever cold surface he’s on. Instinct and reflex keep him that way as he waits to see what happens next. There’s a name attached to that voice, he knows there is, but he can’t pull it up. It’s…

“Riggs?” he asks, and isn’t sure he managed to form his lips around the word at all. 

“Who’s Riggs?” the voice asks. “Hey, Spencer, you with me, man? You’ve been out for hours and you look pretty banged up. I’d come check you out, but, you know. Kinda tied up.”

Not Riggs. Eliot tries to settle the shifting in his skull and the queasy rolling in his body enough to line up the next thought. He’s been through worse. He’s been drugged before and beaten and starved and… Listing all that isn’t helping. 

“Quinn?” he asks. 

The low chuckle answers for him.

“Not used to being the second name guessed, got to say. Well, unless I’ve impressed someone enough they guess I might be Eliot Spencer. That’s happened a time or two. I made a note in my diary each time. Put a little exclamation mark right next to it. It was exciting.”

Even with his eyes closed, Eliot can imagine the way Quinn’s smirking and gesturing through that. If his hands are free to do it, anyway. Having a voice and a name attached to it is helping to calm some of his thinking. He still doesn’t dare move, but he can think his way further along an idea before it dissipates. He risks opening his eyes again and winces. No. Still no good.

“You having trouble with your eyes, too?” Quinn asks, so he’s somewhere he can see Eliot from. About twenty feet away, perhaps, but it’s not as certain as it would normally be. “Aw, man. Hit to the head? Drugs? What are we talking about here?”

“Drugs,” Eliot grunts. “Head.”

“I’m gonna assume you mean hit to the head and drugs,” Quinn says. “Not that they injected drugs into your head. Pretty sure your skull’s too thick for that. Yours more than most.”

But Eliot thinks he detects a note of worry in the younger man’s tone. Maybe. Damn these drugs. He doesn’t know what they are. Probably something to disorient him, to make him easier to contain. It hasn’t escaped his notice his hands are free. 

There’s a weight around his ankles, though, now he focuses. Shifting his right leg sends a clanking noise right through his right temple. He bites off a hiss of pain.

“I’d stay still, there,” Quinn says. “They used something on me, first few days I was here. Kinda lost track of time, but I think it was days. I was hoping you and your merry team might work out where I was and come get me. Looks like that was a hopeless dream, right?”

“Where are we?” Eliot asks. It feels like the floor under him is shifting, undulating, but he’s almost sure it’s not. Almost.

“We’re in a room that looks like ‘plain’ and ‘lack of features’ were in the design brief,” Quinn says. “Can’t hear much other than traffic, and it’s far enough off I’d say we’re out of the way someplace. No real change come nightfall, so not residential. Not been out of this room since I got here, so I can’t tell you anything else. Well, they’ve been kind enough to let me use the bathroom just off this room, but not much more to go on in there.”

Quinn hasn’t said anything about why he’s here. Hasn’t said what he’s been asked, either. 

“You talked,” Eliot says. He manages to open one eye enough to see concrete under him. He still can’t move enough to look over at where Quinn might be. “That’s how they knew to be ready for me.”

He hears Quinn sigh.

“Yeah. Man, listen, I-”

“Drugs. Yeah.”

Eliot’s been questioned under all sorts of conditions. Drugs can be almost impossible to resist, if they get the right ones. People messing with his head is on his list of things he hates most, when it comes to torture and interrogation. The fact he even has a list is something he keeps to himself. He’s almost sure he’s managed to keep from Hardison how many of Eliot’s teeth are false and he doesn’t say anything when the various healed breaks are playing up. He snaps when Parker wants him to use her rigging and doesn’t talk about that time he was strung up for days. Quinn, though, has been through at least some of what Eliot has, he’s pretty sure. Hardison’s research and Eliot’s observations together point to it, even though a lot’s left in the shadows.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Quinn says. “Not the way I usually conduct my business.”

“I’m gonna have to dock your pay,” Eliot manages to get out. 

He says it mostly to the concrete, his lips only an inch from it, but from the chuckle he gets in return he knows Quinn hears him. 

“Not that I wanted you to end up here, too,” Quinn says, after a pause, “but it sure is good to have some company, as far as it goes. Been going out of my mind all by myself.”

Eliot would tell Quinn he’s never noticed he has a mind to go out of, or something else to keep the tone more on sarcasm and insults than on the reality of this situation, which is that the whole plan was doomed before they even put it into motion by the mark having intel from Quinn. And from Quinn’s description, they aren’t anywhere they knew about from the mark’s records, so the chances of Hardison finding him are lower than they would be. 

Eliot didn’t even suspect anything was wrong until they had him in the van. Hell, he was meant to be getting picked up by guys acting at being FBI, so them not quite doing it right was expected. It was when his earbud spat out static and died, a split second before the guy next to him brought something heavy down on his head, that he knew they’d missed a step.

And now he’s here.

In between, there are confused memories of pain and shocks, but he can’t say exactly what was done or for how long or by what. He must have been drugged up that whole time. He doesn’t remember any questions, either, but if he was out of it enough he might not recall them even if they were asked. 

“Hardison?” he tries. “Parker?”

He’s pretty sure the comms are out, or he’d have heard one of them by now. Even in just the few minutes he’s been awake, one of them would have heard him and started making noise. Still, he’d have been dead long since if he didn’t try out every angle.

“They’ve stripped you down to boxers,” Quinn says, matter of factly. “Did the same to me. Took everything I had, even the comms unit Hardison gave me that last time. They’ll have your one, too.”

Right. Stripped down. That would explain the cold pebbling his skin. He should have known that. 

“Took me ages to work out why I was cold,” Quinn says. He sounds like he’s chatting. “Whatever they’ve given you, if it’s what they gave me, you’re doing well to be talking. Hey. You still with me?”

Eliot groans. It’s dark again, his eyes slipped closed without him realizing. Quinn sounds concerned enough he thinks he must have passed out again. From the pain in his shoulders and along his back, and from the bar of dull fire that seems to have replaced a rib, he’s guessing the drug is wearing off some, and taking some numbness with it. 

“Okay. And it comes in waves,” Quinn says. “Thought I could stand at one point. I was wrong. You want my advice? Just stay down until it’s all out of your system. I’ll keep an eye on things out in the land of people who can open their eyes all the way.”

“’preciate it,” he says. He has to grit his teeth together and roll his head, pressing his forehead to the floor, his palms flat to it as well. 

He’s fought in a bad way before now, and maybe he could get up and make a go of it it there were someone to fight, but Quinn isn’t the kind to underestimate his abilities. If he’s telling Eliot that standing is out, then standing is out. The chains on his ankles are maybe for later, which means they might be going to let this wear off, the way they seem to have done with Quinn.

“When did they last come in here?” he asks, the pauses between each word longer than they should be.

“When they dragged you in. About five hours ago. Thought you were dead at first.”

“Before that?”

“Every couple of hours. To see if I had anything I wanted to add in return for my freedom. And don’t get me wrong - I’ve sold people out before. I have. Survival, right? But…yeah. Didn’t feel much like doing you any more harm than I already had. I like you, Eliot, and your crazy friends.”

“And you’d already told them everything,” Eliot says. 

He doesn’t begrudge Quinn. Not really. And if the guy had kept something back, and had believed they’d free him, he could have warned them. 

Quinn sounds wounded when he speaks again, which is unlike him enough Eliot also turns his head to look at him before he catches himself. Movement is painful.

“I don’t reckon I told them about your friends,” he says. “I can’t recall it all clearly, but I think I only told them about you. But like I say, I didn’t see them letting me go no matter what I said.”

Eliot lets that sink in. Quinn isn’t sure, but just the thought that Parker and Hardison might be safe is enough to shoot painful hope through him. If they can’t find him, if he dies here, at least they might be safe. It’s another item on the list of things he doesn’t mention to his partners. 

“How’d they grab you, anyway?” he asks.

“I was doing some recon,” Quinn says. “I like to get my own look at a job when I can. Turns out this time it was a bad idea.”

A spasm of shivering dizziness takes Eliot’s next words from him, and he hears the noise he makes before he can clamp his mouth shut. It doesn’t feel quite connected to him, but that’s something else he’s experienced before. 

“Breathe through it, buddy,” Quinn tells him. 

Eliot isn’t going to insult Quinn by telling him who’s more used to weathering this particular kind of storm. Comparing this kind of thing in that way is next to pointless, in any case. Breaking points are unique. 

He breathes through his nose until the urge to vomit passes and his head stops feeling quite so much like it’s going to unscrew from his body. 

He’s trapped in a room he can’t even get a good look at, with a guy who once beat him up and has since worked with them for pay, and he’s both drugged and injured. Oh, yeah. And he has no way of contacting his team. His family. He should have insisted Hardison plant a tracker under his skin, only cutting the one out that the army shoved in him left him not wanting to go down that road again. Too late to regret being squeamish now.

All he can do is wait, and be as ready as he can be if the chance to save himself crops up. 

“So, who’s this Riggs you were talking about?” Quinn asks. “Friend of yours? He good looking?”

And maybe it’s the drugs again, but Eliot finds himself laughing into the floor.


	19. 19

Riggs follows Hardison and Hagen up to an apartment above the bar, raising his eyebrows at them as they usher him inside and right into something that looks like a set-up from a spy film. There’s a bank of screens behind a counter and seats placed ready for five people. At the other end of the space, a kitchen area and table that look too high end for the area seem even more out of place, and he doesn’t even know what to make of the harness and ropes suspended from the ceiling.

“We thought we might stay here a while,” Hardison says, shrugging. “I kinda missed LA.”

“And Eliot wanted somewhere he could cook,” Hagen says. 

“Well, he never said he did, but we know our man,” Hardison says. “Not sure the bar is quite right, though. Might need to find somewhere a bit more-”

“Restauranty,” Hagen says. “We could buy next door and expand.”

She’s crosses to the ropes and picks one up, casting a speculative look over Riggs as she hefts it. He doesn’t even want to know what she’s thinking.

“Just…buy? Next door?” Riggs asks. 

It’s not like LA is cheap. 

Hardison pulls a face and rocks his head to the side as though he’s considering it and doesn’t see it as any kind of problem. There’s still that tension under everything, but he feels he’s seeing something of their rhythm here. He wonders quite how Eliot fits in.

“You know Rog might change his mind and report me?” he asks. 

“But he’s your partner,” Hagen says, frowning. Her hands grip the rope more like it’s a garrote for a moment and Riggs is glad again that Murtaugh left to see if he could find anything about Ellis Reid’s transportation at the station. “He’s meant to have your back. He isn’t meant to tell on you.”

“They’re detectives, mama,” Hardison says. “Kind of a different deal to us.”

“You FBI types think you’re so different?” Riggs asks, because Murtaugh isn’t here to need the pretense keeping up now and he’s seeing nothing of the agent in Hagen anymore. “You think you’re so different from us?”

“Well, duh,” Hagen says, not biting, and lets go of the rope to take a seat at the counter. 

Hardison smiles at her, fond and warm, and for a moment the worry lying under everything is submerged by something else. 

Riggs sees it. He sees it and he wonders how different it would have been, if it had been more than just him and Miranda, if he’d still had someone left. He can’t see the pain letting anything survive, but these two aren’t looking to be letting losing Eliot tear them down. 

“What’s the plan?” he asks. 

He takes a seat himself and half tumbles back off it again when Hagen turns and hisses at him. Hisses. Like she’s a cat.

“Whoa!” Hardison says, hands out and no sign of a smile. “That’s Eliot’s place, man. Try one of the other ones.”

Riggs waits a beat, but Hagen looks about ready to fly for him and Hardison has no sign of joking about him. Okay. So Eliot has an assigned seat and no-one else is allowed to sit in it. There’s a kind of reassurance in seeing the fracture lines, even if he doesn’t want to see people suffer. Perhaps it’s twisted of him, but he likes Eliot, even though the guy’s a mystery and far from safe, and it feels…better, knowing his people are feeling his absence. 

“I’ll sit over here, then,” he says, and slides across to the next seat. 

Hagen relaxes, switching her attention back to Hardison so fast it’s like she never looked at Riggs. Hardison stares at him for a moment longer and nods, as though Riggs has passed some kind of test. Then he taps something on the tablet that’s appeared in his hand and the screens spring to life.

“So,” he says, “this is Mark Slough, CEO of InTech Incorporated, a company that undercuts the competition by using people up and spitting them out.” 

One image on the screen shows a white man with dark hair that looks dyed and a face that makes Riggs’ hands twitch. Another tap of the tablet has dates and names and a whole load of other details streaming across the right hand screen. Slough retreats to the left hand screen, and the middle one shows a set of images, each one a building ranging from office blocks to suburban houses.

“It targets people who can’t fight back, people without documentation or who are out on the streets,” Hardison says.

“And vets,” Riggs says.

“Not always a separate category to the others,” Hardison says, but there’s that look in his eyes that suggests he knows why Riggs focuses on that one. “But, yeah, vets and others who might have combat experience and trouble adapting to being out and about in modern America tend to get swept up and sent on jobs that I would not send my worst enemy on.”

“Not even Chaos?” Hagen asks, as though that makes any kind of sense.

“Not even Chaos, baby,” Hardison says. “Look, we knew this, and we got Eliot in knowing this. We were gonna swipe information to prove it and drop that tied with a neat bow in the hands of the FBI, maybe with a gift basket of the juicy bits for the local media. Point is, no way was Mark Slough gonna wriggle out of this one and no way in hell was he gonna be able to contest his ex-wife taking custody of their daughter. And now we don’t have Eliot or the information or a way to get Bella out and did I mention we don’t know what’s happened to Eliot?”

“It may have come up,” Riggs asks, but his heart isn’t in it. It feels too much like losing someone behind enemy lines. “Bella? That’s the daughter? This some Twilight deal?”

“If it was,” Hardison says, “we could have sent Eliot in to pretend to be a werewolf, but this is just regular sick, twisted humankind and I can not get a lead on him. You any good at tracking? Got any ways to get us leads we don’t know about?”

Riggs looks into the guy’s eyes and sees all the desperation of someone much closer to the edge of last resort than he wants to see. 

“I’ll help you find him,” he says. “You and Hagen, you’ll get your man back.”

He feels a hand on his forearm, a light touch that’s there and gone, and he looks round to see Hagen leaning in, her eyes intent and solemn.

“Parker,” she says.

“What?”

“Not Hagen. I’m not being Hagen right now. I’m Parker.”

Parker. Right. It’s just a name, and for all Riggs knows it’s an alias, especially if she can discard Hagen so easily. Somehow, though, it feels like he’s just been given something precious.

“Parker,” he says, and nods. “I’ll help you bring him home.”

She frowns.

“You look like Quinn,” she says. “He can fight, but he can’t always be trusted. Not like Eliot can be trusted. I know what Eliot said about you, but can we trust you? Will you catch Eliot?”

She says that like it means more than what Riggs has already said, and he takes a moment. His immediate answer’s lined up on his tongue, but it doesn’t feel right just to spit out something sarcastic. He doesn’t know what to make of this Hag- of this Parker, but he’s sure she’s hurting.

“I’ll do my best,” he settles for, at last.

Hardison shifts, and Riggs breaks eye contact with Parker to find the guy resting his hands on the other side of the counter, staring at him just as intently.

“Then lets hope Eliot’s right about how good that can be,” Hardison says, and turns back to the screens.

Neither of them say anything more about it, not as they go through screens of information or rake over everything they know about what this Mark Slough owns, but Riggs feels that promise settle, feels it sink and weigh on him, and he sits a little steadier in his seat.


	20. 20

When the guys come back, Quinn tries to distract them. He shouts at them, does what he can to rile them and pull them away from Eliot, but the best he manages is two of them come and menace him for a while. They’re bad enough he doesn’t pay them any attention. From his place on the floor, his hands bound and the chain looped though a hook on the wall, he sees one of the others pull out a needle and lean over Eliot, grasping the guy’s hair and pulling his head back.

There’s something about seeing the line of Eliot’s throat like that, with him not even fighting it, that makes Quinn feel sick. Eliot Spencer is control and power and directed force. It’s not that being helpless is the same as being weak: Quinn’s seen too much in his life to think that. It’s just that Eliot, even with a broken rib and with a younger man throwing him across the floor, never stopped fighting, and there’s no fight in Eliot now. 

After coming round that first time, Eliot’s been fighting just to stay awake and Quinn wasn’t lying when he said it took him a good spell to be able to open his eyes and move as far as the chains will let him, but he thinks Eliot’s past that point now, and he’s still been a heap on the floor.

Eliot’s been fading in and out. It’s worse than Quinn had it, and he doesn’t know why. Higher dosage, maybe, or perhaps it’s something to do with the blood spotting Eliot’s body, with the bruises forming along his ribs and down his side. There are marks from blades and from electricity, and to Quinn’s eye it looks like whoever went at Eliot was either unskilled at interrogation or just wanted to hear the guy scream. Those aren’t the patterns from someone who’s systematically building a subject to the point of speaking. 

They were much more practiced with Quinn. It makes him wonder if the aim with Eliot was just to make him hurt. 

“Hey!” he calls out, kicking out and missing both guards. They still step back. “Leave him be. Don’t you think he’s had enough?”

They ignore him, and Eliot doesn’t do more than make a noise that could be anything. It’s been hours since Quinn was given any food or water, and he doesn’t know if Eliot’s had anything even before he was dragged in. 

Now, he watches as the needle slides into Eliot’s skin, as the man with the needle stares at Eliot’s face for a fraction longer than is needed before letting the guy’s head drop onto the floor. Eliot’s skull hits the concrete and Quinn grimaces. 

“What are you after?” he asks. “You ain’t gonna get much if you keep knocking him out.”

They leave without answering, but the man does look right at Quinn, just for an instant, before he goes. That’s hatred there. Loathing. 

Whatever this is, it’s personal.

The door clangs shut and he hears the lock engage, hears the bolts being drawn across. No food or water, then. If they were going to let them starve to death, they wouldn’t drug Eliot. It wouldn’t make sense. The last few minutes have shattered the sense Quinn was making of this, though. 

“Oh, Spencer,” Quinn breathes, not bothering to raise his voice as he watches Eliot succumb to the drug. “What did you do to that guy?”

Because there is no way anyone looks at a person like that for a plot that failed before it really began. This is something else, and if this is someone Eliot knows from before, someone who wants justice or payment or vengeance, then getting the both of them out alive and unmaimed just became a whole lot harder.


	21. 21

Riggs doesn’t leave them that night. He thinks about it. Hell, he gets up to leave more than once. He even says he’s going, but Hardison tells him he doesn’t have to and Parker says he should stay and eat. She’s really insistent about it.

He’d say it’s the same impulse that has Trish make Murtaugh invite him over, and when he’s told to sit at the table and handed a bowl of reheated something or other, he thanks Parker for the food. He means it. It’s delicious. Left to himself, he’d have been eating whatever he found in the trailer and right now that’s about half a bag of something crunchy and the remains of a jar of peanut butter. 

When Parker’s face falls, he looks to Hardison, whose mouth is pulled down. He shrugs when he sees Riggs looking at him.

“We didn’t cook it,” Hardison says, and the unspoken end to that sentence hangs heavy in the air.

Riggs nods and ducks his head, shoveling the next forkful of food into his mouth and turning that over in his mind. Eliot cooks. He plans and he leads cops into cons and he handles a gun like, well, like Riggs. And he cooks. If Riggs had any room left in him for actual emotions, he’d envy the guy. Miranda would have liked him.

He’s most of the way down the bowl when it hits him. Eliot made this, and they have no idea what state he’s in now. When Riggs got back from the hospital, it took him five days to throw out the leftovers from the last meal Miranda ever cooked. He only did it because a buddy came over and made it obvious leaving things as they were was not an option. There was the offer of people coming round to help. Riggs thanked him for his concern, waited until the guy left, and emptied everything into the trash. He didn’t check what needed to go and what didn’t. He didn’t sober up for two days straight, either, and that was only because he ran out of anything else to drink.

The bowl is close to empty before long, and without anyone to torment or tease he finds it harder to drag his thoughts away from the way meals used to be before. 

At Murtaugh’s, he wouldn’t worry overmuch about the scarping of the spoon against the ceramic. Watching Murtaugh react would have been as close to funny as Riggs can get, a minor spike of something in the bland, endless nothing inside him. Here, it sounds too loud. Abrasive. 

“I like to scrape the bowl,” Parker says when Riggs pauses, and she drags her own spoon across the side of the bowl as though she’s playing a musical instrument. 

Hardison shakes his head and one corner of his mouth quirks up. 

“Eliot would get all grouchy over that,” he says, and frowns. “Will get grouchy. Soon as we find him.”

“Not to be that guy,” Riggs says, the spoon still hanging from his hand, “but we ain’t got anything to go on.”

Murtaugh called and reported no usable leads, and Hardison looked close to throwing his tablet across the room when he couldn’t spot the van used to transport Eliot on any cameras after about three blocks. 

“We’ve got back-up coming,” Hardison says, and scrapes his own spoon loudly enough across the bottom of the bowl that it almost echoes. 

They don’t speak much after that, Riggs telling himself with every passing minute that he’ll leave soon. Soon, he’ll walk out and leave this hurting couple behind, with their closeness and with their strangeness and with their ability to be around him without needling at his pain.

The atmosphere is tense, more at some points than others, and normally Riggs would make a joke or leave, but he finds himself sitting there, a glass of JD in front of him after the meal, and the night creeping on outside. The tension is almost soothing, in its way. It’s the tension of waiting for a call to action, a tension of needing to be ready to bring someone back to safety, and he doesn’t feel the same sharp fractures all through him that can happen when he’s by himself in that trailer. 

Neither of them say anything about him leaving, and he doesn’t make any move to go himself.


	22. 22

Sophie steps out of the cab and stares up at the bar Hardison has moved into. Beside her, Nate sighs. He’s creased and tired and wants a drink. She doesn’t have to be a grifter to know that. 

“Was it ever going to be safe, to be back in LA?” she asks. 

“He already owned this under a secure alias,” Nate reminds her. “And Sterling won’t come after them. Besides, LA’s a big place. Portland was getting a little crowded.”

Sophie nods. Of course, staying in Portland after what went down with their last job together was always going to be risky, and the fact the three of them did just that for so long is a testament to Hardison’s hacking skills, Parker’s stubbornness and Eliot’s paranoia and survival instincts. It helps that Sterling went a step further than he claimed he would and fudged some records, but he was never going to put himself in the line of fire, even if he did have something approaching a loving hate for Nate and his team. 

“It can’t be a coincidence they’re back here for a few weeks and Eliot’s… That Eliot…”

She feels Nate’s hand in hers and squeezes it. Neither of them have quite been able to say out loud that Eliot might be gone. Over the years, it became all too easy to just assume Eliot would be fine, even if he hadn’t checked in. Hearing him grouch about them not asking became a comfort. 

She wishes she had him grumbling away in her ear now. 

“We’ll find him,” Nate says, and if he didn’t swallow she might even believe he was completely confident. 

“Show-time,” she says, and steps forward.

They head through the bar and to the stairs at the back without pausing, even though she feels Nate staring at the bottles. 

“Later,” she tells him, because she’s a pragmatist in her way. “Parker and Hardison first.”

The first thing she does when Hardison opens the door is pull him into a hug. The second is wrap Parker up until the woman tenses, releasing her as soon as the hug stops being wanted.

The third thing she does is stare at the man leaning against the table, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle and one leg of his jeans tucked into a boot. The hair is wilder than Eliot’s has ever been, even when he lets the curl show, and Sophie has never quite managed to tease Eliot properly about how much care he takes to keep it straight. There’s no care taken over this hair, except perhaps to have washed it sometime in living memory. Oh, and the mustache… But mainly, of course, there’s that resemblance.

“You really do look like Quinn,” she says. “Are you sure you’re not related?”

This man, Riggs, Detective Riggs, smiles in a way that has something broken about it and shrugs. 

“Don’t even know what the guy looks like,” he says. 

“Well, like you,” Parker says. “Do you need a mirror? Have you never looked in a mirror? Are you scared of them?”

To his credit, Riggs just tilts his head and slides his gaze over to Parker as though he’s checking she’s done. Sophie’s seen worse reactions. The way Hardison doesn’t react to any of that is telling. There’s some trust here. Some acceptance.

“He really does look a lot like you,” Sophie says. “Better dress sense, of course. Smarter. Neater hair, though he did take to wearing it longer. And of course he’s not a cop.”

He raises an eyebrow at that.

“You sound like ‘cop’ is a curse,” he says, still with that smile. 

She’s seen set designs in local theaters that look more convincing.

“Lots of things are curses, Mr Riggs,” she says, and moves over to the kitchen as she speaks. She’s given him enough of her full attention for now. He isn’t to think he has the measure of her. “Being a cop is a choice. That’s worse.”

“Eliot didn’t seem to have a problem with it,” Riggs says. “Seem to remember he lured me into this.”

“More fool you for being so easily snared,” Sophie says, and finds the kettle exactly where she’d expect to find it. Eliot is impeccable in the way he keeps any kitchen that’s his even for a few days. “Tea?”

No-one takes her up on that, but she sets about brewing a pot in any case. It’s a ritual, and as such serves many purposes. Getting a hot drink out of it is just one of them. 

Nate hasn’t spoken yet, but he’s watching everyone, and he claps Hardison on the arm as he passes. 

“You want to see the stuff I got?” Hardison asks. 

“I read what you sent me already,” Nate says. “Anything new?”

Hardison’s jaw tenses and he adjusts his grip on his tablet. He might as well scream his frustration. Sophie sets out five cups on the tray she’s putting together. 

“Well,” Nate says, looking away from Hardison and clasping his hands together. “Well, we’ll have to adjust any plans around what we have.”

Adjust. As though they have any plans yet. Of course, Nate will have something, but they have a cop on the inside. It isn’t a case of conning anything there. And if Eliot has already been rumbled, the chances of them conning anyone in the mark’s company are slimmer than they should be. Not impossible, but without knowing what went wrong-

“Do we know why Quinn didn’t show up?” Nate asks. 

He sounds almost disinterested, but Sophie isn’t fooled. That particular way of leaning over the counter, flipping a page on the paper printouts Hardison’s provided, and the way he isn’t looking at anyone, are all too clear. Nate thinks Quinn is a key to this. 

“You think he sold us out?” Sophie asks.

It’s all too easy to slip back into that choice of pronoun. It might be years since they almost lived together, since they worked together for a good portion of each year, but over that time they became family, and family means together, even if they’re half a world away.

“We have to consider every angle,” Nate says. 

And…oh. Nate doesn’t think Quinn sold them out. Nate thinks something must have happened to Quinn. And if something happened to Quinn, and then to Eliot, then…

The kettle boils, and she lifts it from the hob, and presses her lips together over the words that want to spill out. Nate’s grown so much, healed so much, since Leverage first became part of her life. He is long past self-destructing and he wouldn’t be keeping that thought back from Hardison and Parker unless he thought it was the right move. She’s going to give him a little time before she takes him to task about it. Sometimes, Nate is right, even about more personal things.

“We’ll find him,” she says, placing the lid on the teapot. “He’s family.”

She sees Riggs react to that word. Ah. Right. Amongst Hardison’s information on this situation was a file on this detective. Wife and unborn child lost. She saw the expression on Nate’s face as he read that. Having to feel sympathy for a cop doesn’t sit well with her, but it’s certainly a factor to be mindful of. 

They gather at the table without too much prompting, even this Riggs, and if he looks a little more surprised than the others do to find he’s sitting at the table with a cup of tea in hand, he copes with it well. 

She chatters about nothing much as they drink, observing Parker and Hardison for signs of their emotional states and studying Riggs for any further clues about the kind of man he really is. When Nate sets down his empty cup and fixes Riggs with a look, she falls silent and pours herself another cup.

“So, tell me, Detective,” Nate says, “do you own a suit?”

And from the light in his eyes Sophie knows Nate has a plan. She breathes easier and adds a spoon of sugar to her tea.


	23. 23

Since he moved to LA, Riggs has been called crazy more times than he can count. He’s okay with that. Better to be called crazy than to be forced to speak about what’s really going on in his head. 

He’s starting to think his recklessness and his refusal to follow rules and his efforts to keep himself and everyone around him off balance are nothing compared to these people who seem to care for Eliot so much. 

“You want to do what now?” he asks, leaning back in his chair.

Sophie, standing over him, rolls her eyes and scoffs. She manages to flick her hair back at the same time and Riggs might let it distract him, except he’s been in war-zones and he recognizes the glint in her eye for the danger it is. Distraction is a key tactic in any engagement.

“Don’t be such a child,” Sophie says. “A good actor inhabits the role, which includes costume and hair. You need to look like Quinn.” She flicks a hand in the direction of his upper lip. “That doesn’t make you look like Quinn.”

“If he’s really being held captive by these guys, he won’t have had a razor,” Riggs tries. Leaning back isn’t working, even though Sophie hasn’t moved; he feels she’s filling more space than she should be. “There’s no call to be shaving off parts of me.”

“It looks weird,” Parker says from her perch on the table. She’s about four feet from Riggs’ head and that is not helping him feel relaxed here. “Eliot has hair on his face sometimes, but it never looks like that. Stubble can really burn.”

She’s sitting cross-legged with her elbow resting on one knee and her chin in her hand, and she says that like it’s a perfectly normal comment to come out with. That makes Parker and Eliot who can’t be thrown by Riggs’ deliberately outrageous statements and in any score of unsettling people, Parker’s winning. Riggs is tempted to find a way to unleash her on everyone he knows. Maybe he can find a way to get her invited over the the Murtaugh’s place for a meal.

“He doesn’t need to look like Eliot, Parker,” Sophie says.

“I know,” Parker says. “I was just saying. I’ve never seen Quinn with a mustache. Do you think your mustache would burn?”

Riggs has a sudden mental image of Parker literally setting his facial hair on fire. She probably doesn’t mean that. Probably.

“Let’s not find out,” he says.

“Probably a good idea,” Sophie says, and there’s a tilt to her head that suggests she’s thinking of another kind of burn. “But it does need to come off.”

“I’ve already washed my hair,” Riggs says. “And it’s not even the third Tuesday of the month.”

“Yes, and I’ll style it soon,” Sophie says, unrelenting. “And find you something to wear. Parker?”

The younger woman nods and hops down from the table.

“On it,” she says, and is gone.

Riggs is left alone with one of the scariest, most graceful people he’s ever met in his damn life. 

“You really going to try make me wear a suit?” he asks. 

Although it might be better than sitting here in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. Neither Parker nor Sophie seemed to think this was a problem, and Hardison just waved at him from across the room, whistled in a way that might have been a joke, and kept doing something on that tablet of his. Nate was nowhere to be seen and still isn’t back.

“I’m not going to ‘try’,” Sophie says. She tilts her head to the other side and purses her lips. “I do hope Parker thinks to get footwear. Those boots of yours are nothing like Quinn’s choice and we don’t know how closely these people observed him.”

“Maybe they didn’t observe him at all and I can just go in like I am.”

Sophie stares at him.

“Hey, man,” Hardison calls from across the room, “if you wanna go in wearing a towel, I can probably find you a safety pin or something. Gotta say, though - I ain’t ever seen even Eliot go into a fight in just a towel. Well, all right. Not more than once. Twice. Twice, but the second time hardly counts.”

“How does the second time hardly count?” Sophie asks.

Riggs considers sneaking away as she turns her head, but he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t get far. Instead, he eyes the razor and clippers and other paraphernalia she has laid out on the table. He’s promised to help them, and he’s going to see it through, but damned if he doesn’t regret not putting a few caveats on it.

“Because,” Hardison is saying, “it was a nudist colony. Everyone was naked. And I have gotta tell you, Eliot was not best pleased his cover was the one had to go in. Not pleased at all.”

“Look,” Riggs breaks in, because hearing about Eliot strolling around in just a towel, or naked, is interesting in its own way, but he has other concerns here, “I’m telling you no-one looks that closely. And besides, I don’t know this Quinn. There could be all manner of things I get wrong. We just want to throw them, right? So how about we put a pin in coming at me with a blade?”

“You don’t like other people holding blades near you, either?” Parker asks.

Riggs doesn’t jump, but only because Sophie’s staring at him again and it’s like being pinned. When he twists, it’s to find Parker standing behind him holding suit bags and carrying a pair of shoes. She looks from him to Sophie and her face settles into resolve.

“We don’t use blades near people who don’t like it,” she says. No, it’s a declaration. “It’s an Eliot rule.”

Sophie makes a soft noise, and Riggs twists back to see the woman’s eyes change from almost predatory to affectionate. 

“It might make this harder,” she says. “We’re doing this to find Eliot, Parker.”

“I know,” Parker says. “He’ll just have to be as Quinn as he can be with the mustache. I got three suits. They should fit. He looks the same size.”

Riggs doesn’t ask how she got hold of the clothes so quickly, but he does smile and wink at her when she passes him the first one to try on. She doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing, and he resists the urge to ruffle her hair or pull her into a hug or anything that might count as unwanted. She does nod when he tugs the jacket on and turns to be inspected, and it probably shouldn’t please him as much as it does that she approves.


	24. 24

He’s cold. He’s cold and he can’t remember where he is. 

“Hardison?” he tries. “Parker?”

No. He shouldn’t be calling out when he can’t remember. Maybe he’s meant to be hiding, or it could be one of those times when talking brings pain. There’ve been more than a few of those. He has to stay quiet. He has to stay quiet and work out where he is and what’s-

“Spencer. Hey, Spencer, calm down, man. I’m right here. You’re safe. Well, safe as you’re getting right now. No needles in sight.”

Eliot freezes. 

“Quinn?” he manages.

He’s lying on something cold, that much he can tell, and his muscles are stiff, his skin bruised. Sharp pains talk of other injuries, and there’s something wrong with at least one rib. And Quinn says it’s safe. No. Quinn says it’s as safe as he’s getting. Not the same thing. 

“Can you open your eyes yet?” Quinn asks. “Starting to think you just don’t want to look at me. It’s okay to look, man. Looking ain’t cheating. And your sweethearts can’t complain at you wanting to look at someone as hot as me.”

He’d growl at Quinn, tell him he doesn’t get to talk about Parker or Hardison that way, but the rest of the sentence seeps into his thoughts before he does. Eyes. Quinn seems to think there’s something wrong with his eyes. 

Slowly, Eliot blinks his eyes open, squinting into light that seems far too bright. The space in front of him is blurred at first, but it resolves into blocked shapes, into grays and whites and dark lines, and then into an almost bare room with a high window. There’s a door in the far corner and Quinn sits against the wall halfway across the room. His hands are chained to a bracket partway up the wall. He looks haggard. 

“Where’re your clothes?” Eliot asks. “You take up stripping?”

Quinn smirks and nods at Eliot.

“If I did, looks like I’m not the only one. Your alternative revenue stream dry up? You tried pole-dancing yet? I hear it’s where the real money is.”

Right. He’s got bare skin pressing against the concrete floor. The thought feels familiar.

“How long have we been here?” he asks. “We had this conversation before?”

He still doesn’t move his head. The dizziness is bad enough he wants to shut his eyes again, but if this is something that’s happened before then this time he needs to stay awake. Losing his memory, even short term, isn’t a good sign.

“You could say that,” Quinn says. “I’ve been here a few days, at least. You’ve been here maybe two. They dragged you in here already banged up and they’ve come back and drugged you whenever it looks like you’re coming out of it. Think they hit your head pretty good, at first, too. Not gonna lie - I was kinda worried you wouldn’t wake up a time or two. But I should have known Eliot Spencer wouldn’t give up so easy.”

Right. Eliot lets that sink into his mind and finds echoes: the beatings, the needle, the waves of sickly spinning in his head.

“It’s been longer this time,” he says, only half a question. 

“Yeah,” Quinn says. “I reckon it has. That, or you’re building up resistance. Either way, you think we can work on getting out of here? I’ve sampled everything this resort has to offer. Ready for a new location.”

“There anything in here besides us and chains?” Eliot asks. 

As Quinn tells him, at length, about the total lack of anything in this room, Eliot shifts his feet, finding his ankles bound. He remembers that, now. His hands are free, though, which is close to suicidal on the part of anyone holding him. 

Of course, they probably think he can’t get out of the ankle cuffs. Which means they might not know about Parker, or how close she is to him.

He risks moving, getting his hands flat to the ground and pushing up slowly. He has to grit his teeth and pause for a shuddering breath, but he makes it to a sitting position. When he pushes his fingers into his hair, Quinn stops ranting about the room and its insufficient fixtures.

“Your head still hurting?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Eliot grunts, because it’s pounding worse than when when he’s had something thrown at his skull. Usually by Parker. That’s not why he’s feeling through his hair, though…and…there. “But I’m more thinking about hair care right now.”

Thing with most men is, they don’t consider the work that goes into having longer hair. It looks like if the people who have him do have any knowledge in that area, they’ve assumed Eliot doesn’t own bobby pins. Or keep at least one in his hair. He hurt too badly to try this before, and without being able to see it would have been harder. He’s good, and better than he used to be under Parker’s tutelage, but he isn’t Parker.

He pulls the bobby pin out from where it’ buried close to his scalp and thanks any god listening that it’s still there. Leaning forward, he presses his lips together to keep from throwing up. He doesn’t have time for that right now. Heaving up everything in his guts, even if by now it’s only bile, can wait until he gets them out. The right cuff falls open and he hears Quinn’s move, shifting as he watches Eliot work. When the second one opens, Eliot turns and risks a smile, or as close as he can get to one with the room still slowly spinning and his whole body feeling like the world needs to stop and let him get off. 

“What say we get out of here?” he asks. “I could go a for a decent bar. Grab a beer.”

“Sound good,” Quinn says. “You know a place?”

Eliot’s smile grows.


	25. 25

Riggs stares at Murtaugh’s name in his phone. He hasn’t called his partner about this latest detail of the whole Eliot situation, and maybe it’s best it stays that way. If Murtaugh genuinely doesn’t know Riggs is about to impersonate a hitter, he doesn’t have to lie about it. 

“I know it can be hard,” Sophie says from behind him, “but sometimes you do have to keep secrets.”

“Look, Rog and me, we aren’t exactly up all night sharing stories about our latest crush and whispering our plans to steal the chem test answers,” he says, but he doesn’t put the phone away. 

He hears the rustle of paper and knows Sophie must have turned the page of her newspaper. She still reads those, the paper versions. So does Nate, it turns out. The pair of them are like something from a previous decade, back when criminals were supposedly gentlemen or elegant women, and he finds himself hoping they are as good as they think they are. He doesn’t want to watch Sophie crumble. 

Nate? Nate creeps him out, even if the others trust him. Riggs hasn’t made up his mind about Nate yet, except to form a grudging respect the man can throw back a drink the way he does. 

A clatter from elsewhere in the apartment brings his attention round in time to see Hardison and Parker arrive from another room. They carry bags and Parker disappears out the door with hers as Hardison gestures Riggs over to the counter. On it, he sets out a case and opens it, spinning it round to show off a set of ear-buds.

“What are these for?” Riggs asks. “We going somewhere loud?”

“Nah, these are for the comms,” Hardison says. “Take one. They probably know about them, but you stay out of their hands and we can keep in touch with you. Besides, I added this.”

The guy opens a second box to show off a selection of clips and tiny metallic looking things that look like they came right out of SciFi.

“And those are?” Riggs asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“Trackers,” Hardison says. “I couldn’t get comms going on them, but we’re gonna be able to hear you on some of these if you lose the ear-bud.”

“Some? How many of those are you planning on me having?”

There’s no give in Hardison as he meets Riggs’ eyes.

“As many of them as I can cram onto your body,” he says. “I gotta get creative, so be it.”

Before Riggs can protest, Nate arrives at his elbow, taking the box from Hardison and closing the lid. 

“Remember Detective Riggs is doing us a favor, Hardison,” Nate says. “Perhaps we don’t need to resort to avoiding cavity searches.”

“Wait - What?” Riggs spins as Nate retreats to the table, the box under his arm. “Cavity…? Where exactly do you think he’s planning on sticking those?”

By the time Hardison attaches pins to parts of his clothing and pushes a couple welded onto bobby pins into his hair, it seems almost reasonable compared to what Nate was implying. Still weird. But reasonable. He slaps Hardison’s hands away when the guy tries to pin one to the waistband of his underwear and, when Sophie murmurs something and touches his arm, he sets it in place himself.

“Am I ready, now?” he asks. “No-one going to give me a corsage and take a picture?”

He feels ridiculous, dressed up in this baggy suit with shoes that feel far less sturdy than his usual boots and his hair slicked back into a ponytail. If anyone does try to take a picture, he might just break the damn camera. 

“Nah, man,” Hardison says. “We’re good.”

And he holds out the ear-bud. Riggs takes it, and slides it into place. And just like that he has a voice in his head, Parker muttering about rigging and babysitting people with no experience. It occurs to him he’ll now have four other voices in his head, and a much clearer idea of what was going on with Eliot the first time they met. The guy really was hearing voices. He wonders how it feels, now those voices have fallen silent. 

“Let’s go do this,” he says. “Let’s go get your Eliot back.”

He has no idea why all three of them smile the way they do, a look passing between them he can’t read, but Hardison slaps him on the back and Sophie steps in to kiss his cheek, and Riggs thinks he gets it, why Eliot was so careful about keeping his team in the background. Riggs has risked his life for complete strangers in all kinds of ways lately, but he thinks he’ll do it for more than a sense of duty and a wish to see Miranda.


	26. 26

Quinn follows Eliot down the hallway, keeping his footsteps quiet. He’s got a careful watch on the way the other man moves, because Eliot got them out of the cuffs and out of that room, but he’s swaying as he moves, and not in the seductive way. The man’s injured and out of it, and in anyone else Quinn would be insisting on going first, or on going alone. Saying he’ll go back for people has worked more than once, when it’s been necessary.

Eliot Spencer, though, is more deadly half-drugged and beaten than most people are clear-headed and whole, and Quinn is willing to let him go first. Not like he wants to fight Eliot over refusing. He’s heard stories. That one fight they had at their first meeting marked the end of Quinn underestimating the tales he’d heard, and since then he’s heard more. 

Still, and even with the respect he has for Eliot and his team these days, he’s not going to let his own survival be put at risk. He has a chance for escape here. They were never going to let him go, no matter what he told them, and Eliot finding out Quinn had spilled information on his lovers was a world of pain just waiting to happen, but this? This is a solid chance.

Eliot stumbles as they reach a doorway, throwing out his hand to catch himself. Quinn moves up to grab Eliot, and backs off with his hands up at Eliot’s glare. Even with his hair falling over his face, half-obscuring his eyes, the guy can glare. 

“This goes sideways,” Eliot says, his voice low and labored, “you keep going. You get out. I need them to know what’s happened. I need-”

He stops, closing his eyes for a moment in a way Quinn knows from personal experience. Eliot’s still suffering the effects of those drugs: he’s just stubborn enough to be moving anyway. 

“I know what you need,” Quinn says. 

Parker and Hardison kept safe. That’s what Eliot needs. Not that Quinn is so foolish as to think the pair of them will hold back from saving Eliot. When Eliot opens his eyes and manages a nod, Quinn sees the resignation on his face, just for an instant. It’s the look of someone who knows he can’t get everything he wants, such as his hyper-skilled partners staying out of danger.

“If it comes to it,” Quinn says, and this time he does take Eliot’s arm, hauling him away from the wall and getting him moving, “I’ll be needing a hike in my fee.”

He sees the edge of Eliot’s lip curl into a ghost of a smile, and they don’t say any more about it.


	27. 27

Riggs leaped from the roof of a building and in through the window of the building opposite, just a few weeks ago. He’s not going to turn back now because a woman with almost no expression is strapping him into a harness. She’s strapping him into a harness on the roof of an office block a lot taller than the apartment block he was on the other week, but after a certain distance it makes no difference to survival, anyway. He knows these things. Parker glances up at him and he winks. It has no visible impact on her at all. 

“You ain’t gonna have long before security shows up,” Hardison says over the comms. “In, do your thing, and get out. You hear me?”

“It’s not my thing, now is it?” Riggs says. “You’re taking a lot on faith, here. Body language is a huge deal, my man, and I have not had time to study up on how this Mr Quinn of yours moves.”

“Smile like you know something he doesn’t, point a gun in his face and keep the suit on,” Parker says, and pulls a strap tighter. 

She does at least smirk at Riggs’ yelp.

“And keep your movements smaller, more focused,” Sophie tells him. “Less of the expansive gesturing at every word.”

“Quinn gestures,” Hardison says. “He a regular ball of smooth, sarcastic smugness, and he definitely gestures.”

“Not as much and not in the same way,” Sophie says. “Look, we went over this. Just do what you can. Try to…try to think of being smooth and controlled and…and almost gentlemanly about it.”

“About threatening to shoot someone?” Riggs asks. Even he isn’t so casual about holding a gun on someone as to call it gentlemanly. 

“Think more urbane than country music and bourbon,” Sophie goes on, as though Riggs never said anything. “Still with a Southern twist.”

“Well now you’re just making me want a drink,” Riggs says, and raises an eyebrow as Parker pulls so firmly on another strap that it jolts him half an inch forward. “Or making me sound like I’m playing one.”

“People mostly see what they expect to see,” Nate breaks in. There’s a background of chatter from his end of things. He seems to be somewhere public. “As far as we know, he doesn’t know Detective Riggs exists. He’ll see Quinn because that’s what will make most sense to him. Don’t over think this.”

“We shouldn’t over think?” Sophie asks. “We-?”

“You need to move now,” Hardison says.

And just like that the talk stops. Parker pats him on the back and steps away, and Riggs nods to her, and grins. He just has time to see her face attempt an expression as he takes two swift steps and flings himself over the edge. 

He thinks he hears a whoop behind him as he goes.


	28. 28

Quinn hears boots hitting concrete in time to pull Eliot up short and get them both into a doorway. He sees Eliot focus, tilting his head with his eyes mostly closed, and keeps himself quiet. Quinn is good at what he does. He’s very good. But one of the things that keeps him in the game is knowing when someone else is better, and Eliot is far better at identifying sounds and distances and the like. 

“Eight,” Eliot murmurs, eyes sliding all the way shut. He has himself braced against the doorway and he’s trembling. “Can you take eight?”

“Be tricky,” Quinn says. “They all together?”

“Yeah.”

And they’ll be armed. The guards here have been armed every time Quinn has seen them, even when all they’ve been doing is stabbing an already nearly unconscious Eliot with a needle. Between them, eight shouldn’t be such a problem, but if Eliot’s asking that question…

“You planning on sitting this one out?” Quinn asks, keeping the smile in his voice mostly out of habit. “Maybe we should circle back if you plan on having me do all the work.”

“No,” Eliot says, and drops his head back against the brick behind him. “People that way, too. Gonna be here in a few minutes.”

“Get us into this room,” Quinn says, glancing at the shut door right beside them.

“Leads deeper in. You gotta get out,” Eliot says. 

Quinn doesn’t ask him how he knows. One mission they went on together, Eliot drew a map in his head after they were dragged blindfolded for an hour by people who were meant to be their clients. At this point, if Eliot says something in that tone of voice, Quinn takes it as a fact.

“Us out,” Quinn says, because something about these idealistic idiots is catching, and he doesn’t want to look at Parker and have to tell her he left Eliot behind. Hardison either. “If you think you have a way out-”

“I have a way out,” Eliot says, and moves.

Quinn follows, but Eliot’s already partway to the group rounding the corner, and by the time Quinn gets up to speed Eliot’s flung himself at the leading ones, bellowing. It’s shock and awe, because the guy normally fights quiet. 

Quinn ducks a blow by the one he reaches first and knocks the guy back, but another is right behind him and this one has a gun almost aimed. Eliot kicks it out of the guard’s hands, but another guard has hold of Eliot’s right arm and a third is bringing his gun up, and-

“Run!” Eliot yells. 

There’s a break in the line, and an open doorway not much beyond it. Quinn punches out the guard nearest to him, and runs.


	29. 29

Slough looks up from his paperwork and blanches. Actually blanches. 

Riggs supposes having someone arrive in your office many floors up, brandishing a gun, would be shocking enough. Thinking it’s a guy you’ve had locked up somewhere for days likely makes it stranger. 

“Hey,” Riggs says. “You and me got some talking to do. Can’t say I approve of your company policy on keeping handsome guys in suits locked up. Is it the hair? It’s the hair, right? Because I’m not cutting it for anybody.”

As he talks, he advances on Slough, who leans back and braces his hands on the desk. 

“You can’t be here,” Slough says. “How did you…?”

Lurching forwards, Slough goes for a button on his desk and Riggs points the gun right at him. The guy freezes. One thing about acting the part of Quinn, it looks like people are even more willing to believe he’ll actually shoot. He probably shouldn’t find that appealing. 

“Instead of worrying about how I got here, worry your head over what I’m going to do next,” Riggs says, and he thinks ‘urbane’ as he smiles. He might not have anything like Eliot’s gift for acting, but he thinks it might come out okay. “See, I don’t take kindly to what you did. To me or my friend. And whatever your policies are, I have one of never letting that kind of thing slide.”

“Your friend,” Slough says, “is a murderer. I’ve been told what he did.”

“And what do you think I’m going to do?” Riggs asks, because he can’t afford to think about that comment now. Eliot’s killed people. Fine. Not a surprise. War does that. “You think it’s going to be a picnic? A little trip out for ice-cream?”

“You need to wrap this up,” Hardison says. “He hit the silent alarm under the desk. You have maybe thirty seconds.”

Riggs laughs, leaning back and waving a hand in Slough’s direction. He knows he isn’t coming across right, but from the pale skin and the way the guy’s eyes dart, he doesn’t think it matters. Looks like Nate was right. 

“It is not going to be ice-cream,” he says, backing up with the gun still trained on Slough. “You might want to focus on that. Because my friend and me? We’re not what you might call happy bunnies. No hopping about being happy at all.”

He reaches the window as Hardison calls time, and steps back, into the space. He just has time for his heart to lurch, just has time to think he’s going to plummet into death and into seeing his girl, when Parker catches him. She wraps him tightly in her arms. This time, he hears her whoop right in his ear. Hell, after a heartbeat of regret, he joins in.


	30. 30

Murtaugh looks round the coffee shop, his shoulders tense as he scans the smattering of people for the man he’s been told to meet. Riggs is out of his depth, Murtaugh is almost sure, and being called by some woman he’s never met before and told to be here with no sign from Riggs is doing nothing to improve his mood. 

Over in the far corner, a man in a dark gray suit sips from a tall cup and shakes out a newspaper. He’s older than Riggs. He looks like, at some point, life gave him a kicking. He also looks like he got up and quietly kicked it back. 

“Nate?” he asks, as he gets closer. 

“Detective Murtaugh,” the man, Nate, says, folding his paper over and glancing up only briefly. “Glad you could join us. Take a seat.”

“Oh, no. I’m here in case my partner needs back-up on this crazy scheme of yours.” At least, he assumes that’s why. He’s still not sure quite how the woman got him to turn up here. “I’m not here for a coffee date. I got a beautiful wife at home I can go on a coffee date with.”

“I have a beautiful wife, too, Detective,” Nate says, sounding unimpressed. “That doesn’t mean you can’t sit in that seat. We could be a while.”

Thrown, Murtaugh sits. He should be used to the feeling by now, with Riggs running round setting off explosions and leaping out of or off things. Nate doesn’t have the same energy, though, that same restless, close to the edge feeling Riggs seems to have. Nate is calmer, more centered, and at least as disturbing. In the few minutes he’s been in here, the guy’s given Murtaugh the feeling that he’s being examined and pulled apart. Riggs never looks at him that way. Maybe like he’s thinking how well Murtaugh will spin through the air if he’s hurled off a ledge, but not as though Riggs is trying to unpick his cogs and decide how to re-engineer him for best use.

And all that without looking up from the newspaper for more than a few seconds.

“Are we expecting this to go wrong?” Murtaugh asks, after a long enough pause he’s feeling restless. “Because I’ve got to tell you, I’m not all over this plan. Maybe we should call back-up. Riggs never admits he needs back up. Well, not unless there’s a vet on a mission and a bomb, and I was not okay with that one, I can tell you. I-”

“No,” Nate says, and there’s no give in it. “The plan’s already in motion.”

“What plan? Why is this the first I’m hearing of a plan? I thought you were searching for this Eliot guy, who I have to say does not sound like someone who does much for anyone’s health. Sounds more like-”

“Eliot has saved my life on many occasions,” Nate says, cutting Murtaugh off again. “He’s saved the lives of more people than you will ever know. As has your partner, if not so many as Eliot. But I’m sure neither one of them would turn it into a competition.”

Murtaugh isn’t so sure about that, and he’s only ever met this Eliot when he’s been playing a role. Murtaugh has his doubts about how much of it was acting, having spoken with Cahill about the guy again under the guise of tidying up his notes on the case. She seemed certain there was real trauma there, and surely no-one can be that good an actor. Plus, going in and pretending to be a gunman is even crazier than the kind of thing Riggs pulls. Probably. Actually, he doesn’t even want to think about what Riggs might pull after being in any sort of contact with Eliot. For all he knows-

A flash of movement across the street draws his eyes and he sees a van pull up outside an office block. A second later, two people literally drop down the side of the building, pause for a moment, and take off for the van. There’s something horribly familiar about the way one of them moves.

“Did you see that?” Murtaugh asks, already partway out of his seat. 

A woman by the window is pointing, turning to her friend and saying something in an excited tone of voice, but most people seem to have missed it. 

The van is gone by the time Murtaugh’s at the door to the coffee-shop, and he turns to find Nate standing just behind him, newspaper folded and under his arm. 

“I told you,” he says, as he gestures for Murtaugh to go ahead of him, “the plan is already in motion. Shall we?”

Which is when hears the alarm go off across the street.


	31. 31

Parker’s still grinning as the van rounds the corner and the office block vanishes from view. It lights up her face and Riggs can’t look away. 

“Well done,” Sophie says, in his ear and from the front of the van. “That seems to have worked. Have you ever considered being on the stage, Mr Riggs?”

“Detective,” Parker says, still grinning as she peels herself out of her harness and turns to Riggs. “Hardison says we have to remember that. He’s not like us.”

Which is true. As she tugs and pulls at the harness she secured to him less than twenty minutes ago, Riggs chastises himself. He isn’t like them. They’re a team and he…isn’t. He has to remember that. Getting caught up in this, in Parker’s elation at throwing the both of them down the side of a building and at Sophie’s expert grace and at Hardison’s ingenuity, is only going to hurt worse when they get Eliot back and disappear. 

Riggs has his trailer and his memories and his job. 

“I think he’s a bit like us,” Sophie says. “A bit like you, at least, Parker. I’ve never heard anyone else sound so delighted to be falling down from a window like that. Hardison normally screams.”

“Hey. It’s a scary-ass thing to be doing, hurtling to your death like that with only a piece of string between you and the Reaper,” Hardison says, but he doesn’t sound especially offended. It has the sound of an argument they’ve all had before. “Besides, least I get in the rig. You seen Eliot react to it? Man looks like he’d fight his way out with a butter knife if he had to. He can growl about it all he likes. I swear he’s got more problems with it than I do.”

“Eliot rule,” Parker says, which means nothing but seems to shut Hardison up.

“Did it work?” Riggs asks, because he really can’t tell with these people. They seem to bicker and plot and say weird shit no matter what. “Did we worry him enough?”

“Oh, he is worried, all right,” Hardison says. “Got lines lighting up all across the board. He’s calling someone right…now.”

There’s a jump in the sound and Slough’s voice comes through the comms, slightly fainter than Hardison’s was.

“…playing at? He escaped? You were meant to have him locked down! You assured me he was locked down!”

A pause makes Riggs wonder if the call has been dropped, but another voice speaks up before he can ask. It’s got the tense undertone of someone who knows they’re in for a world of hurt. 

“They were locked down. Should have been no way out of that room. Had Quinn chained to a wall and Spencer has a head wound and is drugged up to his eyeballs. With the chains as well, he should have been stuck there. It’s not like we left him anywhere to hide a lock-pick! The guy’s Houdini.”

Riggs sees the way Sophie and Parker grow more intense at that. More focused. There’s something a little like pride on Parker’s face, but it’s hard to read her. 

“And you’ve lost them both? What am I going to tell him?”

“No! No. Quinn got out. Spencer’s still here. Took four guards to take him back down, but he’s shackled wrists and ankles now, locked down tight. Quinn wasn’t the target anyway. He’ll not care about Quinn.”

“We’ll see,” Slough says. “I’m not taking the fall for this.”

The voices cut out and Hardison speaks up, words clipped.

“Who in the hell is he talking about? Nate?”

Nate’s not been audible since he told Riggs to get out of that room. Now, his reply is terse.

“There’s something going on here we don’t know about. Meet back at the bar. We’re just going to meet Mr Slough. Sooth his nerves about a dangerous criminal being loose and breaking into his building.”

“We?” Parker asks.

“Detective Murtaugh is being good enough to accompany me,” Nate says.

Just before his voice vanishes again, Riggs hears Murtaugh’s voice, rising in pitch as he asks who Nate’s talking to. 

“He dragged Rog in on this?” Riggs asks. “Oh, he is not going to be happy about this. Wait. He’s in the office block? Near Slough? Slough who I just threatened? You know, if he knows about that he is going to have a lot to say. A lot. You think you know what complaining is, you have not met my partner when he’s got himself upset over some little thing.”

Sophie makes a noise that isn’t a word, but Riggs takes the hint and falls silent. Hardison throws in the odd line about tracking the number, but the mood is tense and subdued until the guy shouts some word that cannot be English and tells Sophie to take a right. 

“Where am I going?” she asks, swinging the van around even as she speaks.

“Old warehouse. Got a slew of offices attached, but it hasn’t been used in over a decade,” Hardison says. “So far down his records I missed it, but it’s where the call went to and that has to be it, right? We get there, we find Eliot.”

“We haven’t got a plan to get in,” Sophie warns, and there’s no sound from Nate.

“Just get us to the warehouse,” Parker says. “I’ll think of something.”

And there is nothing blank or wild about her now. Just the focus. Just the determination.


	32. 32

Murtaugh watches at Nate slides into the role of cop, flashing a badge that even looks real and introducing himself by a name Murtaugh has never heard or seen on any duty rota. Of course, LA is a huge place and he doesn’t know every cop. For all he knows, Nate really is this Detective Morgenstern. Thing is, the guy’s voice changes the minute he opens his mouth at reception, and Murtaugh is convinced this is an act.

He’s so convinced that he almost feels his own badge is fake, too. 

They wind up ushered through to an office where a man with suspiciously dark hair and a suit that looks like it costs five times, at least, as anything Murtaugh has ever owned stands behind a desk, a drink of something amber in his hand. He seems to be trembling.

“And I suppose you’re going to be telling me the LAPD will have this monster in custody within the hour,” the man, Slough, says, as though he’s in the middle of an argument Murtaugh doesn’t remember being involved with. “Hmm? What do I pay my taxes for if dangerous luna-”

“Now, Mr Slough,” Nate says, still with that oily, unctuous edge to his voice he’s had since he smiled at the receptionist. “We’ll do everything we can. But this isn’t exactly a normal crime, now, is it? What can you tell us about the situation.”

Slough goes into a rant about a guy with a gun swinging in through his window and vanishing the same way, and Murtaugh tries really hard not to form a suspicion about who that man could be.

“And do you have any idea who this man is?” Nate asks. “Any prior contact? It would help us a great deal, you understand, if-”

“Oh, I know who he is,” Slough says. “Mr Quinn. Hardened criminal. Wanted in at least two countries.”

Quinn. The guy that bartender friend of Riggs’ Eliot said looked just like Riggs. Murtaugh pulls a face but stays quiet.

“Any idea why he’d be targeting you, Mr Slough?” Nate asks. 

Slough draws himself up and Murtaugh is sure there’s deceit here. He hasn’t investigated homicide for this long without some instincts developing. Still, he doesn’t know enough about what’s going on to jump in just yet, and he’s still hoping the gunman isn’t actually Riggs. If this Quinn looks so much like him, maybe it was Quinn.

“He attempted to break into our premises several days ago. My guard scared him off, but it looks like whoever has hired him still wants something from me.”

“Hired him?”

“He’s a retrieval specialist and hit-man for hire,” Slough says, and that’s definitely sweat on his brow. “For some reason he didn’t shoot me, but I want a protection detail. You have to keep me from being shot by that maniac!”

Nate smiles, but doesn’t speak, and Murtaugh finds himself stepping in to try the usual soothing tactics that he employs in this kind of situation. Of course, these days he’s been using them more to calm people down after they’ve met Riggs, but either way he gets Slough to climb down to the point the guy’s thanking him for his help. 

As they leave, he turns to Nate and stops short when the man holds up a hand and hushes him.

“Did you just…? Oh, you did not just hush me,” he says, but Nate is already several steps ahead of him and he has to speed up to draw back level. “Did you just hush me? Me? I’m a cop, man. And I don’t know what you are, but that badge is as real as my long locks of golden hair!”

“The badge is real,” Nate says. “It just isn’t mine. Now let’s get out of here before he works out I’ve planted one of Hardison’s devices on his computer.”

Nate is so assured that Murtaugh finds himself doing as he’s told, frustration simmering under his skin as they go. Riggs is all kinds of frustrating, but at least when he doesn’t tell Murtaugh something crucial, it’s because the guy’s so caught up in his own extended form of a nervous breakdown that he isn’t noticing the impact he has on others. Murtaugh thinks, anyway. This Nate is calculated. He’s keeping things to himself because he’s just decided to. 

They’re only a few steps out into the sunlight before Murtaugh’s had enough.

“Listen,” he says, “either you tell me what’s going on or I am arresting your ass and you can argue being a cop all you want from a holding cell. See how good that borrowed badge is then.”

“That will mean revealing that Detective Riggs is impersonating a hired assassin,” Nate says, as though it doesn’t concern him at all and is merely an intellectual exercise. “I understand you like to be by the book, but that will mean the book being thrown at your partner. I thought you cared more about him than that.”

Murtaugh opens his mouth but can’t think of anything to say that might sway this man. He’s…he’s… He’s worse than Riggs, is what he is. 

Before he can find any words, Nate frowns and tilts his head, tapping at his ear. 

“Guys? Guys, where are you? I’ve taken care of Slough’s office. Do we have a usable location?”

And that’s the other thing - Nate has some kind of comms and he won’t tell Murtaugh who he’s speaking to. He has no idea if Riggs is as out of the loop as he is. 

“What?” Nate barks, his frown growing. “No. No, that is not- Yes. I realize that, Parker. Of course no- I never said you weren’t, but this is more sensitive than-”

With a growl, Nate stops and Murtaugh almost runs into him.

“That makes it even more crucial we find out what we’re dealing with before you go in after him! You don’t even have a hitter. No. No, he isn’t. Of course-”

This Parker must cut the link, because Nate pulls out an ear-bud, glares at it, and screws it back into his ear with a look on his face that’s scarier than some of the crap Riggs has dragged Murtaugh into. 

“Hardison? Yes, I know. We’re on our way to the bar. Which is where Parker and Sophie should be headed. I’m bringing Riggs’ partner. They’re going to throw themselves into that without a plan? Of course I know it’s Eliot! Just… Just find what you can on this new player. And tell them to be careful.”

Nate takes off walking again, faster this time, and glances over his shoulder at Murtaugh.

“You’ve got a car, right?” Nate asks, again just before Murtaugh can speak. 

“Yeah. Yeah, but you’re gonna need to explain all that. Who’s Parker? Who’s Sophie? I met Hardison. Tall kid, right? How’s all this got anything to do with this Eliot who likes shooting up museums?”

“We’re taking your car, then,” Nate says, and that’s all Murtaugh can get out of him.

He trails along, fuming, and wondering how anyone has ever worked with the guy for more than a few days without killing him.


	33. 33

Sophie drives like she’s got a vendetta against the road, but Riggs doesn’t say anything. She’s on the right side of the road, and it’s not like he can always make the same claim. As they go, Parker grimly sets out equipment from cubby holes around the van: ropes and knives and other things. 

“What’s the plan?” Riggs asks. “We going to burst into somewhere full of guards and just hope for the best?”

“I can get in,” Parker says. It’s an absolute. 

“Great,” Riggs says. “You can take Eliot a care package. We’ll all club together, get him some cookies and a bunch of flowers. How are you getting back out? And how are you getting Eliot out? It sounds like he’s in a bad way. Now, I’m not one to stand in the way of a suicidal, destructive plan, but I missed the part where the aim was to get you caught, too. Or get him hurt worse. Trust me, no matter how strong a guy is, at some point he isn’t up for a daring escape attempt.”

“Nothing stops Eliot,” Parker says. 

“Parker, Slough said he’s got a head injury,” Sophie says.

“He got shot twice and walked it off,” Parker says, and there is zero sign she’s joking. “He’ll be okay. I just have to get to him.”

“And he’s drugged,” Riggs says. “And shackled. I only met the guy a few times, and I get that doesn’t make me an expert, but I met a lot of guys who are tough and trained and every single one of them would have trouble with all that.”

“They aren’t Eliot,” Parker says. 

Sophie doesn’t say anything else, but she shifts her hands on the steering wheel and her lips are pressed tightly together. 

Riggs can hear Nate and Hardison in his ear, but Parker pulled her ear-bud out and hasn’t put it back in yet, and Sophie either did the same without him noticing or just isn’t responding to any of Nate’s calls to her. Riggs isn’t sure what that says about the two of them.

Finally, Sophie pulls to a halt by a warehouse and cuts the engine.

“It’s still a way off,” she says, twisting round in the seat. “Parker, Nate’s right. Riggs is right. We don’t have a plan and we don’t have a hitter.”

“We have Riggs,” Parker says, just as she did when Nate brought it up.

“Who isn’t a hitter, no offense,” Sophie says. 

Riggs holds up his hands.

“Hey, non taken. I mean, I can hit people, if I need to. I have a gun. Pretty good with it.”

“See?” Parker says. “And I have this.”

She holds up something in each hand and Riggs has a moment where he thinks he’s getting a real sense of how Murtaugh might feel.

“Explosives?” he asks. “You just carry around explosives?”

“I can get in. I can create a diversion. We can get Eliot out,” Parker says. “We have a plan.”

She sets to stuffing supplies into a bag and reaches for the door as Hardison’s voice comes back on line.

“Guys, tell Parker to get her ear-bud in. I just dug something up you are not going to want to hear.”

Nate doesn’t say anything, but Riggs has to wonder if it’s because he’s worked out Parker won’t listen to him just now. He opens his mouth, but Sophie beats him to it, so she has just been sitting there refusing to speak to Nate.

“Parker, Hardison has something. Go back on comms.”

Parker scowls, her hand twitching near the door. With a sigh, she pulls back and shoves the ear bud back in place.

“What is it, Alec?” she says. 

Alec. So, Hardison has a first name. 

“Mama, I think we’ve been had,” Hardison says. “This Slough is dirty, no doubt of it, but looks like he’s working for someone. The vets who go missing? They’re vanishing off someplace far as I can see, and the information about his daughter? I ain’t saying it’s a lie, because it’s not, far as the intel says, but it was leaked to get someone’s attention. Our attention, looks like.”

“It was a trap?” Parker asks, her lips twisting.

“Yeah, baby.”

“Someone was trying to trap us?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. I think they were after Eliot. Someone was trying to trap Eliot, and this Slough has his men keeping our man locked up and ready for collection. And Parker? Whoever was on the other end of the line is on his way. I’ve not got a name, but he’s going to be at the warehouse in less than an hour. You have to get Eliot out of there. Now.”


	34. 34

Quinn stays out of sight, ghosting past any people and hot wiring a truck as soon as he’s clear of the building. There’s a gym bag on the passenger seat, and the clothes aren’t the right size, but they’re better than just being in boxers. He doesn’t much want to turn up in the busier parts of LA mostly undressed, even though the bag only yields battered jeans and a shirt that looks like all the color have been washed out of it.

On most other jobs, he’d be out of there at once, heading away from town and lying low until he knew he was in the clear. But this isn’t most other jobs. This is Eliot and his team that’s really his family, and Quinn still insists on payment and he still has his limits, but he also promised Eliot he’d see those two safe. 

He aims to keep that promise. 

Besides, leaving Eliot Spencer behind doesn’t sit well with him, and he’s next to certain Parker and Hardison will mount a rescue mission as soon as they can. Quinn isn’t averse to being hired for that. 

The address of the bar the team’s taken over for the duration is clear in his memory, even though he never made it that far before he was captured, and he steers the truck that way. Muscles that now have chance to protest twinge and ache, and his own injuries are nothing like Eliot’s, but he’s not free of them. No open wounds and no breaks, so he’s functional, but he’d rather be heading to a bolt-hole and rest. 

In the time it takes him to find the bar, park somewhere out of the way and slip in through a back door, his head is pounding and he wants to lie down on a real bed and sleep for about three days. It’s part of the job. He can’t stop until it’s done and it won’t be done until they have Eliot home. 

Quinn is about to take the stairs up to the apartment above when he catches sight of the bar through a part open doorway. Nate Ford and another guy, someone Quinn doesn’t recognize, are partway across the room. The new guy is gesturing, complaining, and Nate has a look on his face that speaks of tears before bedtime. 

“Hey,” Quinn says, pulling the door wider and stepping through. “Nate. I got news on our boy.”

Before Nate can respond, the other guy bolts forward and grabs Quinn by the shoulders. Moments later, Quinn’s got him pinned to the nearest table and Nate is staring at him like Quinn’s just done something wrong. 

“Let him up, Quinn.”

“Guy just rushed me,” Quinn says, but he does ease up a little on the arm-lock. 

“Quinn?” the guy says. “Did you say Quinn? As in, looks just like my partner but is really a paid killer? That Quinn?”

It’s easy to reapply the force.

“Ow! Okay, okay. You’re not a hired killer! You’re just…you’re just a free-lancer in a tough world!”

“Let him up,” Nate says. “This is Detective Roger Murtaugh. He’s been helping us to look for Eliot. And you.” And that is wariness and disapproval in Nate’s voice. Never a good thing. “Care to explain why you’re here and Eliot isn’t?”

Quinn looks down at the man, the cop, he has sprawled on the table, his face pressed to the wood, and he frowns. 

“Wait. Did you say ‘looks like’ your partner? You saying I look like a cop? This would be the guy Eliot was talking about? He really looks that much like me his own partner would mix us up?”

Before he can process that, footsteps clatter down the stairs and Hardison arrives at speed. The younger man skids to a stop a foot or so away, his eyes wide and hopeful.

“Quinn?” he says. “That you? You got away?”

And he whips his head around, scanning the space, a question on his lips. This is the bit Quinn hates. This is a reason he doesn’t let himself get attached. Sighing, he releases the cop and steps back, pushing his hair back and shaking his head.

“Sorry, Hardison,” he says. “I got out. Eliot didn’t.”

As Hardison’s face falls, he feels like he finally got his wish to hit the guy. 

“Why not?” Hardison asks, and it would be adorable, how he faces off against Quinn as though he really thinks fighting him is a good idea, except the kid’s clearly hurting. 

“He’s in a worse state than me,” Quinn says. “He got us out of the cuffs and out of the room, and he took down a bunch of guards long enough for me to get by. Look, man, I was following orders getting out.”

“Eliot told you to leave him,” Nate says. “Does he plan on you going back for him?”

“More resigned to it than planning on it,” Quinn says, and nods at Hardison. “He wants you safe. You and Parker. The place is stuffed full of guys with guns. Not somewhere he’s going to want either of you going.”

“But you’re gonna help us get him out,” Hardison says. “Right?”

Quinn shrugs and looks down at himself. 

“Hey, you get me a decent set of clothes and I’ll help you lay the place to waste to get our boy back. I can tell you where it is.”

“No. No, you see, we already have that covered,” Nate says. “Parker and Sophie have taken Detective Riggs over to the location already.”

“Riggs would be my doppleganger?” Quinn asks, smiling. He’s going to need to see this guy they all think looks so much like him. He kind of though Eliot was just too drugged to be making sense. Should have known. “He any good in a fight?”

“He’s been known to get into a few,” Detective Murtaugh says. He’s scowling at Quinn and rubbing at his own shoulder, but so far he’s made no attempt to arrest anyone, which is a point in his favor. “You make it sound like a bad idea to get into this, though.”

“Oh, it’ll be a kill zone,” Quinn says cheerfully. “I only just got out and they weren’t expecting us to be free. Hell, they were likely not expecting Eliot to be conscious. You want to get him out of there? You’re going to need everyone you can get.”

“If Riggs is going into that,” Murtaugh says, “then I need to call it in. This has been a lovely experiment in going so far off book we’ve reached a non-writing system, but I can’t let my partner go into a situation like that.”

“No,” Hardison says. “Nu-huh. You are not calling cops-”

“Hardison,” Nate says. And everyone falls silent. Nate has that effect. “We might need the help.”

“Or I could knock him out and leave him here while we go and deal with this,” Quinn says, still smiling. “No need to involve the law, Nate. You think Eliot would want either of his sweethearts near the law?”

He sees the cop blinks and turn to look at Hardison, confusion clear. Nate and Hardison skate right by the sweethearts comment.

“We can keep them clear,” Nate says. “But sometimes you need the law on your side.”

Quinn stills, considering whether this is something he should be near, but he sees the way Nate’s gaze slides over to the cop, and there’s a plan in there. He’s sure of it. 

“Okay, then,” he says, relaxing into Nate taking the lead. “Now how about that change of clothes?”


	35. 35

“Change of plan,” Nate’s voice says in Riggs’ ear. “Quinn’s here and Detective Murtaugh’s calling in back-up.”

“Cops?” Parker asks, her face tight with a kind of tension Riggs swears he’s seen during active combat. Parker pauses partway along one wall, the breeze blowing her hair back. She has a dark cap tucked into her belt, but she hasn’t put it on yet. “We don’t need cops. Nate, Eliot’s hurt too bad to get away from cops.”

Riggs wonders if she’s forgotten he’s a cop.

“We’re going to need the help, mama,” Hardison says, but he sounds worried. Unsure. “Quinn says the place is packed tight with guns and more than enough guys to use them. Not a good idea going in if we can have help in a few minutes. We’ll keep Eliot away from them, all right? Riggs will help.”

“Oh, no,” Riggs says. He leans against the wall himself, uncomfortable in the suit. “I have got no sway with those guys. They all think I’m one step from leaping off a ledge.”

“You leaped off a roof an hour ago,” Hardison points out.

“And they don’t know that,” Riggs says. Hardison doesn’t need to know about any other roof-leaping incidents. “Look, I’m not saying back-up is a bad idea, but I’m not stupid. You guys don’t operate within the law, and if my esteemed colleagues show up, you might get caught in the cross-fire. You sure you want to do this?”

“Nate’s got his ‘sure’ face on,” Hardison says, still sounding less than sold on the idea himself. 

Another voice breaks in, this one southern and irritatingly smug. 

“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” it says. “I’m not at my best after their tender hospitality, but I can give you a clue. Don’t go rushing in without me, now.”

“Quinn, I’m not leaving Eliot in there if I don’t have to,” Parker says. 

Quinn. The guy they all keep saying looks like Riggs. He doesn’t sound anything like Riggs, that’s for certain. 

“And Rog is okay with this?” Riggs asks. “With sending cops in to rescue a guy we had in holding the other day? Listen, let me talk with him, all right? Give him one of those ear buds and get him in the loop.”

Keeping Murtaugh out of it is clearly a lost cause and the guy gets irritable when he isn’t told what’s happening. Fun though that can be, Riggs doesn’t like it so much when it’s someone else doing it. And Eliot’s people are more than competent, but Riggs knows Murtaugh better, and he knows the guy’s come in after him before. It probably shouldn’t feel quite so much like a revelation. 

A few seconds later, Murtaugh’s voice cuts in, in the middle of complaining. Riggs’ lips tug into a smile.

“-no way to treat an officer of the law, you hear me? I should-”

“Hey, Rog,” Riggs says.

“Riggs? What’s going on? Was that you falling down the side of the building back there? What were you thinking? I know I’ve told you not to do anything stupid, and this is about as stupid as you can get and still have a chance of walking away from it.”

“Relax, Rog,” Riggs says, and stretches his body so he’s lounging more than leaning. He can’t help it. Some part of him just wants to rile Murtaugh. And, hey, if Murtaugh already knows about the building then there’s no point pretending. “FBI, remember?”

“If they’re FBI then I’m the Easter Bunny,” Murtaugh says. “I’m gonna call back-up. You at least hang back until it gets there-”

“We have company,” Sophie says, and no-one even tries to speak over her. “A car far too high end to be someone unimportant. I think our mysterious string-puller is here. Do you have anything on him yet, Hardison?”

“No.”

Riggs hasn’t heard Hardison sound so terse in the brief time he’s known him. 

“From what we do know, Eliot’s not likely to appreciate this visit,” Riggs says, already bracing himself. “You call people in, Rog, but I’m not leaving him in there without help.”

And he sees Parker’s tight nod before she grabs his arm and they both take off running.


	36. 36

It’s bad. 

Eliot’s been in enough tight spots enough times in his life to be way past panic or melodrama or anything that might slow him down from getting the job done. Hell, he’s long past finding it most way to amusing when it’s something he can walk away from with a few bruises, and there’s at least a chance he’ll smirk if there’s only a sprain on the horizon. A break can annoy him, but it doesn’t keep him back. 

But this? This is bad.

Quinn’s been gone for a while. He isn’t sure how long. Hard to be sure with that drug still sludging up his system and the new blows he’s taken. Still, something about it’s bothering him. If not for the lingering effects of that drug, he’d be able to-

Oh. Right. Yeah. Lingering effects. No new hit. They haven’t drugged him again. And they haven’t hit him in the head, either. Which means they want him at least semi-conscious. 

And he isn’t back in that room. No. They’ve dragged him to a room he doesn’t remember and bound him to a metal chair, the cold of it along his skin part of the reason he’s as alert as he is. Not that it’s saying much. 

His chin is on his chest and he hasn’t made an attempt to get free. There’s padded leather cuffs round his wrists and ankles, he’s almost certain, and he pries his eyes open a sliver now to check. Without moving his head, he can’t tell much, but the buckles tell him this isn’t something he’ll be getting out of easily, and they haven’t left him any free limbs. 

Now he’s awake and sitting up, he finds himself looking down at his own body, at the cuts and bruises, and thinks he’s glad Hardison can’t see this. Parker, too, but he’s always thought she might know more about this kind of hurt than anyone should, especially given how young she must have learned it. His reasons for not wanting her to see are slightly different. The skin over his rib is darker than he’s happy with and breathing is harder than it should be. 

A voice from nearby startles him, and he jerks, the chair not moving at all. Bolted down. Right. 

“He’s secure? And awake, from that reaction. Be certain he can’t cause any more trouble. We aren’t being paid for him to be trouble.”

“Yes, sir,” a younger voice answers. One of the guards. Eliot’s heard that voice before. “What about-?”

“No mention of the other one. I’ll handle briefing our guest about that. Stay focused on the objective.”

Objective. Not Quinn. Not keeping them away from Slough, either, by the sounds of things. And Eliot’s bound in a way that means he can do no harm to anyone and is awake to know it. He’s always been better at putting puzzles together than some people realize. A lot of people. It’s an impression he’s worked on, over the years. 

“Who wants me?” he asks, and swallows around the hoarse rasp of his own voice. 

“Sir?”

“No. It’s fine. He’ll need to be conscious.” 

Footsteps, and then Eliot’s hair is gripped and he finds his head pulled up and back. The light is still too bright for him to look up without his eyes watering, but he makes out the face of a man he very much wants to punch, with short, sandy hair and a look on his face of someone who dearly wants to give the appearance of being fully in control.

“Who wants me?” Eliot asks again, barely any louder than before. “Who you got me trussed up for?”

“A thug like you has enough enemies to go around,” the man says, but his eyes aren’t as steady as they’re trying to be. Whoever it is, it’s someone who scares this guy. He’s wary, at the very least. “From what I hear, you’re a murderer. Practically a serial killer. Got to have a lot of dangerous people pissed at you. Doubt you want any of them getting hold of you.”

Eliot manages something in the vague area of a smirk, and he knows it’s a ghost of what he could come up with normally, but from the way the guy’s face shifts it does something. Maybe more ghoul than ghost, then. 

“Can’t say it’s at the top of my list,” he says.

Which is when the room shakes and a roar that should send any sane man running for cover fills the space. The hand holding his head up tightens painfully, its owner’s eyes widening. Eliot smiles. 

That sound doesn’t mean fear to him, not when it’s attached to someone who’d slide into a heavily armed facility holding Eliot. That sound might mean worry and panic to his captors, but to him it means family. 

It means Parker.


	37. 37

Riggs grimaces and shields his face as the explosion rocks the space, keeping himself between Parker and the damage. She doesn’t even look away. There’s an intent, hungry look on her face that Riggs is glad isn’t turned against him, and he still hasn’t got his head around how the three of them work together, her and Eliot and Hardison, but he can’t deny the intensity he sees. 

“Come on,” she says, tugging him on before even he’d normally move. “Eliot. Now.”

They hit the room she’s identified at a run and she must be part something magical, because there’s one guard on his face, unmoving, and one guy standing over another in a chair. He doesn’t even need Parker to tell him told-you-so. This is the room, even without Quinn having arrived or any scouting. She can come with him on any case she wants, anytime. 

Anytime he isn’t meant to be arresting her, that is. 

The guy standing lets go of the one in the chair and spins to face them, gun coming up just a fraction later than it needs to. Parker sidesteps, skirting him with the casual disregard of someone used to having solid back-up, and Riggs slams into the man. He isn’t letting down Parker’s faith in him, even if he thinks some of it is more leakage from her faith in Eliot. 

It’s a brutal fight, as far as it goes. This one has better training than some random criminal, but he’s not got Riggs’ level of brawling mixed with military training mixed with a disregard for his own safety. By the time Riggs leaves him out cold on the ground, Parker’s working on the last of the cuffs. 

“Help me,” she says. “His eyes aren’t focusing right.”

And Riggs takes his first proper look at Eliot. Fuck. The guy’s a mess. Riggs sees a mess in the mirror pretty much anytime he looks in one, and this is…this is as bad as when he’s been on a bender and run into a few fists, hoping to chase away the image of Miranda. Just for a while. 

Except Eliot wasn’t trying to chase away any images. This isn’t something Eliot’s done to himself, however many people he might have tricked into helping him. No. This is something Eliot’s had done to him. 

“Yeah,” Riggs says, taking in the injuries and the way Eliot’s eyes are glazing and the droop of his head. And the lack of clothing. “Sure. Here.”

He reaches out for Eliot and flinches back as the guy moves, half taking a swing and slithering lower in the chair until Parker moves, grabbing Eliot’s head between her hands and peering into his face. He stills.

“Eliot.” She’s almost hissing. “It’s Riggs. He’s helping. Let him help you.”

She looks up and nods, and this time Eliot lets Riggs take one of his arms and haul him up. Parker gets on the other side, but when they try to get him walking he only makes it a few steps before his legs go from under him. 

“Come on, Eliot!” Parker says. “Whoever they’ve got coming here for you is on the way up. We have to move. Now!”

“’m trying,” Eliot says, far too quietly, and he almost gets his head up enough to swing some hair back from his face. 

Riggs has to hand it to him: he’s not met many people who could even be trying to move under their own steam looking like they’ve been through what Eliot has. The guy’s got a special kind of endurance. Even so, they need to move faster and Parker’s almost vibrating with the urgency to be gone. 

“Not gonna be enough, buddy,” Riggs says, and stops walking. He meets Parker’s eyes over Eliot’s head and sees the knowledge on her face. They need to do more than support him as he walks. “He going to let me carry him?”

“No,” Eliot says.

“Yes,” Parker says, right over him. “Yes, he is. Eliot, let Riggs carry you.”

She gives Eliot a push, sending his weight more Riggs’ way, and Riggs dips to heave the man onto his shoulders. It’s not so long since he did this, and he can run carrying a follow solider this way, if he has to. Which he might. 

Eliot makes a sound of protest, but he doesn’t fight, and Riggs hopes it’s this sudden obedience the guy’s got going on and not that he’s passed out. Eliot’s skin is warm where it touches the back of Riggs’ neck, and where he’s got hold of him with his hands. Maybe a little too hot. Riggs frowns, but they can worry about fever or any other issues when they have Eliot out. There’s no evidence of the kind of blood loss that means immediate action is needed and beyond that there’s not much he can do here. 

“Lead the way,” he tells Parker.

She nods and leads him to the door. They’re several feet down it, heading back the same way they came in, when she freezes, throwing up a hand in a signal Riggs recognizes. He obeys more from surprise than anything. Looks like Eliot’s been training his team.

“Too close,” she says, possibly not to Riggs, and spins, staring up. “You’ll not get him through the vents.”

“No,” Riggs says, almost as quietly. “No, that I will not.”

Parker looks at him, then, and he thinks it’s the way people look at something under a microscope, or maybe at an equation that needs solving. There’s no malice there, but he’s horribly aware he’s nothing more than a part of some mental maze she’s running. 

“In here,” she says, and steps sideways, hands out to a door that opens in moments, even though Riggs was sure it had a lock on it. “Get him in here.”

Once they’re through, Parker shuts the door and, yes, it locks. They’re in near darkness, the high window not wide enough for even much sunlight to get through, and Parker glares at it, then the door, before turning to Riggs. 

“Stay here,” she says. “Put Eliot down.”

He does as he’s told, wondering what else he can do but stay with the door locked, and watches as Parker crouches. He steps back as she cups Eliot’s face, lifting his head enough she can swipe his hair back and look him in the eyes, which seem a sharpen just a bit when she’s in front of him. 

“I’m coming back for you,” she says. “For both of you. We all are. You just need to stay out of the way, okay? Just…just hide. Real small and quiet. It can work, when it has to. When you can’t get out. You can do that, Eliot. Can’t you? You can do that for me?”

Riggs isn’t the kind to embarrass easy, not with that thick layer of numbing grief between him and the rest of the world, but he thinks he shouldn’t be watching as Parker smooths Eliot’s hair back again and waits for him to react. Eliot, who swung at Riggs, makes no attempt to pull back from Parker, his jaw resting in her palm. The edges of his lips move, just a fraction, and he can’t pull off a smile, but he tries. Sat on the floor, propped against a wall and looking in danger of sliding right down it into a heap, Eliot tries to smile for Parker.

“Sure thing, sweetheart,” he says, soft and rasping. 

“Good. Good, Eliot,” Parker says. “No fighting unless you have to. We’ll get you out. Riggs will keep you safe.”

Riggs nods, even though Parker can’t see him and Eliot’s not looking. No-one could turn Parker down when she speaks in that tone, even if he hadn’t already meant to protect this man for her. 

He opens his mouth to ask how exactly Parker thinks she’s getting out, but she takes a run up, leaps, and is out of the window before he can get out a word. She hasn’t even looked back to see if he’s on board. 

“Okay,” he says, pretty much under his breath. He can’t hear anyone outside the room, not yet, but he believes Parker heard someone too close to get them all out, and he doesn’t want to be overheard with Eliot in this state. The guy is not going back in that chair. Lowering himself to the floor nearby, Riggs leans in and catches what he can of Eliot’s attention. “You hang in there, you hear me? I got no intention of letting your girl down.”

This time, the attempt at a smile might be aimed at Riggs. That maybe shouldn’t warm him as much as it does. He smiles back.


	38. 38

Bailey piles out of the car and right into Murtaugh, who’s shouting at some guy with curly dark hair while Riggs watches from a few feet away with his arms crossed. With his arms crossed and his hair neater than she’s ever seen it, and…his mustache is gone, but the ways of Riggs are beyond her and she hasn’t any intention of worrying about it now. She isn’t the one with the crush on the guy.

“Murtaugh,” she calls out, part of her attention on the bustle around her as the others leave their vehicles and take up position. “What’ve we got?”

“We have got a disaster waiting to happen, is what we’ve got,” Murtaugh says, and that is not his happy face. “This…this gentleman has opinions on everything, and I, for one-”

“Give the guy a break, Rog,” Riggs says, tilting his head and smiling like he’s said something especially funny. “Our friends at the FBI have a hard enough time of it without us causing them grief.”

“Oh? Our friends? Our-?”

“Detective Murtaugh’s concerns are understandable,” the man says, and as his eyes pass over Bailey she wants to stop, to take a step back. She doesn’t. “But this operation must go to plan. We have people in there.”

“One less than you thought,” Riggs says, and points. 

Turning, Bailey sees a woman in black appear from around the side of a building and skid to a halt near a tall guy and a woman who looks far too composed. The man frowns and glances over and, before Bailey, or Murtaugh, can ask what’s going on, calls out.

“Agent Hagen? What have you got to report?”

Agent Hagen. Bailey can safely say she has never seen an FBI agent wearing that outfit before, but she remembers hearing Avery rant about this woman and it’s not like Bailey’s against seeing women turn out tough and capable. Right at the moment, as Agent Hagen strides over, her expression tight and intent, with the other two now in her wake, Bailey feels the itch she gets under her skin when she wants to know more. More about this case, certainly.

“He’s still in there,” Hagen says, before she’s quite within comfortable speaking distance. “They’re both still in there.”

“Did you see the guy calling the shots?” Riggs asks, and now Baily hears him speak again there’s something not quite right in his tone. His voice is…smoother, maybe. Perhaps this is Riggs sober. That might explain suddenly realizing the facial hair needed a rethink. “He in there with them?”

Hagen flicks a glance up and down Riggs and her expression is impossible to make out.

“Couldn’t find you a suit?” she asks, like she’s one to talk about wearing an appropriate suit. 

Riggs shrugs. 

“Hey, turns out I’m not in charge of what I wear.”

Which Bailey is prepared to believe, frankly. She doesn’t think anyone is in charge of what Riggs wears. His usual get up is bad enough, but right now she isn’t even sure the shirt fits, and the jeans would be hanging off him without the belt. She doesn’t think Riggs is really in charge of anything, except maybe how early in the day he starts drinking, and that’s up in the air. 

“Agent Hagen,” the tall guy who followed her over says, and he reaches out and takes hold of her arm, pulling her attention to him, “Agent Kierney here needs to know where we should go in. We’re getting them out, you hear me? But we need to know what you saw. Agent?”

“Yeah, Agent? What did you see?” Murtaugh asks, and he really doesn’t like the FBI turning up, Bailey knows, but he has an extra dose of irritation in there today. 

Before anyone can speak, Murtaugh’s phone rings and he answers it still with that pinched look of anger on his face. It’s a look that shifts slowly into something icy. Murtaugh makes the odd noise, of agreement or of disbelief or just the kind of sound he makes when he’s listening. It’s a longer call than they usually get at a scene, right before something this big, and by the end Murtaugh looks long past playing.

“Seriously? How did it-? No. No, I got that,” he says, and turns a glare on the agents, and on Riggs, that makes no sense. “Yeah. Will do. We’ll get it done.”

As he pulls the phone away from his ear, he turns to Agent Kierney, who shifts in a way that makes him suddenly far more formidable. Kierney opens his mouth, but the composed woman is suddenly right next to him, a hand on his arm, and Kierney stops. He still looks like someone who should be watched. It doesn’t slow Murtaugh down.

“And just when,” he asks, in the tone he reserves for people who’ve hurt kids or endangered whole families, “were you gonna tell me we were trying to rescue a mercenary and hired assassin?”

“You’re going to need to explain what you mean,” Kierney says, in a tone far too measured to be calm. “We have a man in there-”

“Two men,” Murtaugh cuts in. The emphasis on that is strange. “Two. And one of them’s wanted in more countries than I’ve been to. He kills people! Riggs makes me fear for my life, but he’s never murdered families!”

“Hey, now,” Riggs says, holding his hands out.

Murtaugh doesn’t even look his way. He does take a step closer to Kierney, who’s eyes are making Bailey want to reach for her gun. She has next to no idea what’s going on here, but she doesn’t like any bit of it. Riggs being subtly wrong is the least of it. 

“I should-” Murtaugh starts, and cuts off as the woman lets go of Kierney’s arm and shifts her weight. “What? You got something to say to me? Agent Jones?”

“Your information is clearly less than accurate,” the woman, Jones, says. “We can correct that later, once we have our people out safely. This really isn’t the time to turn on each other.” She moves again, swaying closer to Murtaugh and raising an eyebrow. “That isn’t going to help anyone.”

“No,” Murtaugh says, sounding like he’s fighting his own words. “It isn’t. So, yeah. We get them out first, and then we take Eliot Spencer into custody.”

“What?” Jones asks. She betrays an almost total lack of any reaction other than that. 

“You didn’t know who you had working with you?” Murtaugh asks. “You expect me to believe that? Because his prints alerted people in places I didn’t even know about and we have enough accurate information to go in there just to make sure he doesn’t get away. Have you any idea what that man has done?”

“Have you?” Kierney asks, tone flat and cold.

Bailey adjusts her stance and checks on Riggs, who looks less amused. He’s uncharacteristically quiet. 

“Do we have a problem?” she asks.

Riggs shakes his head, but he doesn’t look at her. Not that he always does. She knows enough of what happened in his past to get he’s living in his grief more than in the present, but there’s a different flavor to this lack of notice. She looks back to Murtaugh, who gives every impression of hanging in a moment, working his way to a decision.

“Avery only had to tell me a fraction of what he’s got in that file we’ve been sent for me to know this Spencer can’t be allowed to walk away. We’ll get him out, we’ll get him and…and the other guy out, but you don’t get to disappear him. The…FBI can have as many deals with mercenaries as it wants, but this is the LAPD and we have orders to take him in. From way above your pay-grade.”

That must have been quite the call from Avery. Bailey holds herself ready, just in case, and for a moment she thinks she’s going to need to step in to back Murtaugh up. God knows, Riggs isn’t doing his usual interference. But Jones nods, and glances at Kierney, who blinks. 

“Fine,” he says. He’s so mild as he says it that Bailey doubts what she saw up to now. “Fine, Detective. If you have orders, you have orders. Let’s just get them out, and we can get this sorted later.” A slight curve of the lips is probably meant to be a smile. The man really shouldn’t take up acting. “The last thing we want is any unpleasantness.”

“We need to go now,” Hagen says. “Riggs-”

“Is ready to go when you are, Agents,” Riggs breaks in. “Just say the word.”

He moves closer to the people from the FBI as he talks and he’s limping, but Bailey doesn’t let herself get distracted by that. Riggs is almost always carrying some injury or other. He probably did something stupid while chasing a suspect, and no doubt Murtaugh will tell her about it later, at length and with much gesturing, all while an odd look of pride and affection tries to camp out on his face. Bailey hasn’t got time for any of their denial over becoming friends. 

“If we’re going in to save someone so dangerous, shouldn’t we know more about it?” she asks. 

“No need,” Riggs says, and that look of steel on his face, lurking behind the smile, is something else she’s seen before. Riggs has his rules, even if no mortal can work them out, and things he actually cares about under the bravado and self-destruction. “I’ll take point on that one.”

“Oh, no. You won’t,” Murtaugh says. “You will stay where I can keep an eye on you. You all will. You hear me? Now let’s move.”

Bailey sees him look at her, and she nods. She still isn’t sure what’s going on, something she hates, but she’s been getting used to coping with it recently. If Murtaugh needs her back-up, though, he’s got it. This Spencer is being rescued and then he’s being held. If Murtaugh thinks this is a time Riggs might go rogue on them, Bailey will just have to be part of seeing that this is also one of the times when Riggs doesn’t get his way. 

Not every case can involve consequence free explosions. 

They move out.


	39. 39

Riggs doesn’t get a clear signal through the ear-bud in here. It fades in and out. Probably something in the wiring or, well, he has no idea. Could be goblins for all he knows. The fact is, he spends a good few minutes with the warmth seeping out through his back into the wall and with Eliot looking part-way to dead in front of him, and when the ear-bud spits out a sudden round of clear information, he kind of wishes it hadn’t. 

He doesn’t say anything about it. Not at first. The important thing is they’re coming now, coming to get him out and Eliot along with him. He gets more random bursts of clarity, but there are too many people on the comms and not enough actual conversation for him to make out details. People are moving, people are ready to shoot their way in. 

Someone out there is being called Riggs.

“Think your friend Quinn is playing at being me,” he tells Eliot, keeping his voice low. He doesn’t get much reaction, but it’s the thought that counts. “I can’t believe people are buying it. No way is the guy as pretty as me.”

“You’ve never even seen him,” Eliot says.

He doesn’t lift his head to speak and he sounds like someone who needs a whole load of medicine for his throat, but it’s the first sign of awareness since that part-smile just after Parker left, and Riggs grabs hold of it.

“Yeah?” He leans in until he’s only a few inches from Eliot. They can’t afford to be overheard, after all. “You saying he’s prettier? Which one of us would you take to prom?”

Eliot blinks. It looks to take plenty out of him. Slowly, he shifts his gaze until he’s almost looking at Riggs and his brow creases.

“Quinn knows what a shower is,” Eliot mutters. 

Riggs pulls a face of mock outrage, but he also notes the way Eliot’s breath hitches, the way his skin is ashen under the clamminess. The way something about the guy still looks dangerous. Of course, that could be just as much what Riggs overheard on the comms. And, well, no-one lately has accused Riggs of acting like he has much sense of self-preservation. 

“I know what a shower is, Spencer,” Riggs says.

And finds himself with a hand at his throat, those blue eyes of Eliot’s much closer and nowhere near as friendly. The tremor in Eliot’s grip isn’t enough for Riggs to be sure he’s in the clear. Besides, a wounded animal can be even more deadly than a healthy one. He tamps down on the burst of elation at the thought. 

“How do you know that name?” Eliot grates out.

He’s practically holding himself up by leaning his weight on Riggs, who can’t decide whether to leave Eliot to it or fend him off. He isn’t sure who’s wellbeing he’s considering when he leaves things as they are.

“Heard it from Rog…my partner. He’s got one of your ear buds. So have I.” Riggs has to speak slowly, keeping watch on Eliot to see if the air supply’s going to get cut off. He keeps his own hands in his lap. “Your fingerprints sent up a flag. Actually, sounds like they sent up a whole parade of flags.”

Eliot’s lip curls. The fogginess in his eyes is still there, but a fierce energy is trying to break through it. Riggs kind of wants to see what happens if it wins.

“Impossible,” Eliot almost spits. “Hardison wiped what Vance didn’t clear.”

“Vance?” Riggs asks.

Confusion clouds Eliot’s face, just for long enough that Riggs can see how thrown he is. It’s chased away quickly, but Riggs figures he’s pushed enough for now. If Eliot snaps and kills him, something more likely with the state the guy’s in than it was back when he was whole and unaffected, then Riggs will have failed Parker. Whether the information Murtaugh’s been fed is real or not, whether it’s another sign someone is out to get Eliot, Riggs made that promise to the woman and he isn’t going to let her down. 

“All right,” Riggs says. “All right, I get it. Not meant to know your name. But you should know, someone’s given it to my boss, with orders we’re to take you in and hold you.”

Having this whole conversation at something below a whisper isn’t making it any less surreal. There’s a cloying air to it, of something that should be staying hidden, and Riggs isn’t sure who he feels like he’s betraying, but it’s someone. He wonders if it’s himself. 

Eliot’s fingers flex and Riggs feels his throat close, just for a second, before air floods back in. 

“Why’re telling me? Warning me?”

Paranoia isn’t unique, not among people who’ve been through the kinds of things Riggs has, that Eliot likely has, but Riggs has never managed to bring it to the levels clear in Eliot’s tone right now. He makes his own words as soothing as he knows how. 

“I don’t especially want to see you locked away,” Riggs says. “I’m hoping whatever my boss has been told, it’s wrong.”

That way, maybe there isn’t a betrayal here. Maybe it’s just misinformation, something that can be sorted out. 

Eliot blinks again, and moves his hand, falling back against the wall and closing his eyes. He swallows, his chest moving in a way that almost hurts Riggs. They don’t talk again, and Riggs carefully doesn’t think too hard about the fact that Eliot hasn’t even asked what Avery has been told. He hasn’t made any attempt to deny whatever he might think it is.


	40. 40

Quinn keeps in position, Parker not far from him and Murtaugh much closer than seems necessary. In the past, he’s put up with a lot for Eliot. Hell, he even got through that first job with the team without killing that hacker, and even for someone who prides himself on his control that was a lot. Throwing Chaos over that railing was almost enough to have him cancel the favor Eliot promised him. Almost. 

This guy, though… 

Murtaugh keeps shooting looks Quinn’s way, looks that scream the detective’s displeasure at having to pretend Quinn is Detective Riggs. It’s not like Quinn’s delighted with it. From the reactions outside, it seems people expect Riggs to be unstable. Unstable and poorly turned out. It would be offensive, if Quinn cared enough about other people’s opinions to let it bother him.

He watches as Parker gestures, leading them forward, and makes sure to gain a few steps on Murtaugh. There are others in the building, and sounds of people resisting arrest echoing down the hallways, but Parker knows where Eliot is, which makes this the only part of the operation that matters. 

“Keep focused,” Nate says in Quinn’s ear. “Our most important objective is getting them out safely.”

“Glad you reminded me,” Quinn says, finding the right pitch to be heard by Nate but not have his voice carry. He’s worked with the Leverage team enough by now to be good at this. “Here I was thinking we were aiming to do the enemy’s job for them.”

But he hears what Nate isn’t saying: nothing comes above Eliot, and Riggs, being in one piece. If Parker panics, if she puts keeping Eliot away from the cops above him getting the help he needs, Quinn will need to be the clear head. That’s normally Eliot’s job, but Quinn can step up when the guy’s down. 

Parker has run the cons with a clear head and a firm hand for a while now, but anyone can lose their sense when a loved one’s freedom and life are at risk. Quinn’s got his own thoughts about the kind of person who could drop Eliot’s information back into the system. 

Another round of gunfire down a hallway to the right makes Quinn want to twitch in that direction, but it’s not close enough to really be an issue. Yet. 

“Here,” Parker snaps, and launches herself round the next turning. 

Quinn is on her heels. He sees the three guards from a few doors down turn and react, and he’s among them before they have chance to do anything but take a breath. Seconds later, all three lie at his feet and he pushes his hair back into it’s usual neatness. 

“Damn,” the young woman with the attitude says. Bailey. That’s her name. She has a look on her face that is closer to disapproval than respect. “He’s worse than usual. What the hell happened?”

Murtaugh, standing so he’s almost in front of her, lowers his gun and finds a way to look even less impressed. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, though it clearly grates. “Riggs is always like that. Always throwing himself into situations he shouldn’t be anywhere near.”

Right. The partner has an ear-bud, even if he hasn’t been responding, and Murtaugh is the kind of man to make a dig if there’s even a chance of the target hearing it. 

In Riggs’ absence, and because Nathan Ford made it clear he has to play this role, Quinn throws out his hands and makes his smile as unbalanced as he can.

“Hey, don’t hate, Rog,” he says, and sees the way a muscle in Murtaugh’s face twitches. 

“Guys,” Hardison’s voice breaks in, and Quinn may just be imagining the click and tap of electronic wizardry in the background. “Come on.”

If Bailey notices the argument cuts off before it can start, she doesn’t say anything. The other cops behind her are at alert, not paying any outward attention to Murtaugh and Riggs, and Quinn has to wonder about why a cop is allowed to get away with as much as this Riggs must do. 

Parker has her hand on the door handle of a room near Quinn, and her body language screams discomfort. Right. The reveal.

Quinn ramps up that smile and tries to think the kind of thoughts that will make him seem like a barely functioning human disaster with a badge, and turns to Bailey. 

“We’ll clear the way,” he says. “Come on, Bailey. Bring your friends.”

Murtaugh opens his mouth, but stops before any words spill out. This is the danger point. If Murtaugh decides containing Eliot is more important than protecting Riggs from as much blow-back as possible, then he’ll keep Bailey and the others by his side. Riggs even described his partner as by the book, from what Quinn’s been told, but Murtaugh looks like he’s been pulled off that course enough to cover for his partner. Quinn knows how he feels, in a way. He never expected to be so pulled of his course that he’d risk his life, and his freedom, pretending to be a Detective, just so they could rescue a man he was once hired to take down. 

If Riggs is even a fraction of the force that Eliot Spencer is, it’s not so surprising a guy like Murtaugh could be pulled into a new orbit.

“Bailey, go with Riggs,” Murtaugh says. “And you guys. You go, too. We’re covered here.”

Quinn exchanges a look with Parker, who still looks like she wants to run or electrocute someone, but he’s almost sure she’ll hold herself together for Eliot. He turns to lead as much of the LAPD as he can do away from the men they’ve come to rescue. 

Nate Ford has a plan, and Quinn is a long way past doubting any plan of Ford’s will work.


	41. 41

Riggs hears the gunfire and he hears the movement. He hears shouting and more gunfire and he checks on Eliot to see the man’s tense. Eliot’s eyes are still struggling to be alert, but the coiled sense of something deadly is stronger, and Riggs puts out a hand. He doesn’t touch. He’s not stupid. He just…puts out a hand, palm open and facing Eliot.

“Hey. Hey, she said not to fight. Remember? Small and quiet. They’re coming for us, man.”

“I ain’t the small and quite type,” Eliot says, despite the fact Riggs has inches on him, and he has to say it through his teeth. 

He’s slumped to the side, one hand pressed against the dark stain over his ribs, and Riggs has heard healthier breathing from people who smoke forty a day. It’s not like it’s the first time Riggs has talked down a vet in crisis. Every time is different. This one is more different than most, but…

“They’re coming for us,” Riggs repeats. “Parker’s coming back for you and she doesn’t want you fighting yourself in to the grave before she gets here. You hear me?”

Eliot glares at him. It’s weak, but a thin blade can kill. Riggs really needs a drink.

He stays like he is, hand out as though that has any chance of stopping Eliot if he really powers through it, and waits. He tries to ignore the faint bruises at his throat. However this goes, it won’t be long now. Which is good, because Eliot’s been looking worse and worse. 

Heavy thuds not far from the room bring his attention round, and he makes out the muffled sound of talking. Still nothing in the ear-bud, but… Murtaugh. That’s Murtaugh, sounding angry. 

“They’re here,” Riggs says. “We’re almost out. Just hang in there.”

Eliot says nothing. He does growl. Riggs blinks and looks at him, but it doesn’t stop the guy. 

“Say, you sure you’re not part werewolf?” he asks, just before the door opens and light spills into the space. 

“Here,” Parker says, stooping next to Riggs and shoving a bundle of cloth at him. “Put these one. Quickly. Quinn’s gone the other way, but we don’t have long.”

She’s moved on before Riggs can react, and by the time he works out she’s handed him a pair of jeans and a shirt she’s crouching in front of Eliot, hands reaching for him.

They all freeze at the sound of a gun being drawn.

“Rog…” Riggs says, looking up at Murtaugh, who’s aiming that thing right at Parker’s back. Not a good idea. “You might want to rethink this.”

“I got no intention of hurting anyone, here,” Murtaugh says, “but this guy is bad news, Riggs. Agent Hagen can argue he’s working for the FBI all she wants, but our orders overrule that. I gotta bring him in. I need you to back me on this.”

Parker is still. She’s so very still that Riggs wonders if she’s aware what’s happening, but when she turns her head enough for him to see her expression it’s clear she’s entirely present and aware. And calculating. 

Movement has her head turning back to Eliot, and she grabs his wrist and one of his shoulders as he tries to move. Riggs can’t work out what he was attempting, but he has no problem believing it would have ended in pain for someone. 

“No,” Parker says, and it’s an order. 

“Park-” Eliot gets out.

“No!” she says again. “We don’t fight this.”

She doesn’t sound happy about it, and there’s a tense moment where Riggs, his hands full of fabric and his gun weighing heavy in his belt, half thinks she’s trying to persuade herself. The moment passes, and Eliot gives in. Until he did, Riggs hadn’t realized how much tension was still in the guy’s body, how much Eliot was still holding himself ready. Now, his eyes glaze and his hand, held in the air by Parker’s grip, relaxes, the fingers no longer ready to stab and grasp and hurt. He’s injured and he’s vulnerable and he’s giving up whatever chance he thought he had here because Parker is telling him to. 

Nate’s voice in Riggs’ ear startles him enough he jumps, but no-one else reacts. Right. They must have been able to hear him already. Figures Riggs would get the dud ear-bud.

“Parker, what’s Eliot’s condition?”

“He’s hurt,” she says. “Like I said already. But he’s standing down.”

“Nate, I don’t-” Hardison says.

“I heard you the first ten times,” Nate says. “This is what has to happen. How’s Detective Riggs?”

“I’m fine,” Riggs says, and this time he does catch the look on Murtaugh’s face. Some kind of guilt, but determination. There’s going to be no reasoning Murtaugh out of this one. “Just enjoying the ride.”

“Get changed,” Nate says, sounding more like Riggs’ old commanding officers than anyone on the the force has ever managed. “And get out of there. Quinn is heading to the other side, so back out the way you came in, Parker. We can avoid people seeing the both of you together, but only if you’re quick.”

Riggs almost asks why, but of course admitting to Avery that he’s been working with these people, whether anyone really believes they’re FBI or not, still means a lot of explaining, and a lot of paperwork. It occurs to him, too, that if he’s having to defend himself he’s going to find it even harder to help anyone else. 

He doesn’t look at Eliot as he shrugs off the suit and changes it out for the clothes Parker’s brought. He doesn’t look at Parker, either. She might be going along with whatever plan Nate has here, but Riggs doesn’t need to know her any better than he already does to get she’s far from okay with it. 

Once he’s changed, he bundles the suit up and pushes it into the bag Parker has next to her, nodding at Murtaugh as he stands.

“Knew you’d come get me, Rog,” he says. “Never leave a man behind, right? Or did you just miss my face already?”

“You’d look better without the mustache,” Murtaugh says, but he doesn’t look away from Eliot and Parker and he doesn’t lower the gun. “You gonna try and stop me taking this guy in?”

“You mind telling me why we’re taking him in?” Riggs asks, because Murtaugh and the others don’t know the ear-bud came good for those few minutes. “Seems a little harsh, is all I’m saying. He was only trying to help a girl and, sure, his methods are a little strange, but not like I always go with the standard-”

“He’s a murderer,” Murtaugh says. “We arrest murderers. Now, you gonna try and stop me? Partner?”

“No,” Riggs says, and this time he does look at Parker and at Eliot. “No, Rog. We arrest murderers.”

Parker’s shifted so she’s kneeling at Eliot’s side, holding him up, his head on her shoulder, and she won’t meet Riggs’ eyes. And Eliot…Eliot was tied to a chair not so long ago, but this is the first time Riggs has seen him look defeated.


	42. 42

Bailey loses Riggs somewhere in the maze of hallways and arrests and fights. Not that she ends up having to fight anyone. Riggs takes out eight different people in the few minutes from leaving Murtaugh to her losing Riggs, and every time is more precise and more…more focused than she’s seen Riggs fight before. 

She’s starting to think she’s the one needing a drink.

“Riggs?” she shouts, turning round from cuffing the last of the guys in the current hallway. Another cop hauls the guy away and she nods her thanks. “Riggs? Where’ve you got to?”

There are cops all over the place, still alert but with the look about them of people seeing the end of a job. She catches the attention of a woman she’s exchanged words with before and waits until she’s close enough to speak without having to yell.

“Hey, you seen Detective Riggs? Tall? Long hair? Looks like he’s about to go over the edge the whole time?”

The woman shakes her head and shrugs.

“Sorry. Not seen him, Detective. We’re about done here, though. Perhaps he went back out?”

Bailey nods again and checks the area to be sure, but the beat cop has it right. The place is cleared out. She still keeps a careful eye out as she makes her way back to the front of the building, to where Murtaugh is standing near an ambulance, deep in discussion with Avery.

Avery cuts off whatever they were talking about as she approaches and greets her in a way that says he has a lot on his mind.

“Sir,” Bailey says, nodding to Murtaugh as she addresses Avery. “We done?”

Avery waves a hand out over the scene.

“This is going to take hours of paperwork, so no, we are not done. But we do seem to have everyone in cuffs who needs to be.”

“I lost track of Riggs,” she says, even though she doesn’t actually want to wind Avery up even more. “You got any-?”

“Well, I’m touched you care, Bailey,” Riggs says, and appears behind Avery, who jumps. “Just so we’re all clear, this is the kind of worry that makes a man feel loved, okay?” His hands describe a circle and he seems to be pointing at something, his gestures back to the large, uncontrolled ones she’s used to. “Would it have been so hard for either of you to express some concern?”

Avery scowls and Murtaugh opens his mouth to say something that is as likely to back Riggs up as go against him, but Bailey gets in first.

“What happened to your face?”

Riggs looks at her as though she’s the one who’s in need of therapy, his brow creasing. 

“What?” He feels at his own face, patting a cheek with each hand and prodding his own nose. “It all feels like it’s still there. Am I sunburned? You know, you can get a surprising amount of sun inside those places. They should really put up a health warning.”

“Your mustache,” she says, because that should be missing, and isn’t. “It’s back.”

“From where?” Riggs asks.

Murtaugh has seemed on the verge of another attack since she got here and right now he’s squinting at Riggs as though he hasn’t seen him in ages.

“Must have been a trick of the light,” Murtaugh says at last, as though Bailey really could have been fooled by bright daylight. “Or a vision from God. Maybe you should shave it off, Riggs. Show that baby-face of yours to the world.”

“You stay away from my face,” Riggs says, pointing first at Murtaugh and then at Bailey. And that seems to be that. “We get everyone?”

“Looks like it,” Avery says. 

“Eliot?” Riggs asks, and Bailey is still thrown enough by the mustache that maybe she’s really imagining something here, but he sounds a bit sharper on that than he needs to be. “What about Eliot?”

“Spencer,” Murtaugh says, putting a stress on the name, “is in here.”

He pats the side of the ambulance and Bailey notes the way Riggs nods, sees the way his eyes slide up the vehicle as though he’s planning. 

“And he’s going to be under a strong enough guard the whole time he might as well already be locked away,” Avery says. And shudders. “Homicide is one thing. I never want to be this close to someone with his history again.”

“He’s sedated,” Murtaugh says. “Guy’s out cold.”

“Which is the only reason I’m standing this close to the ambulance,” Avery says, without missing a beat. “The FBI really worked with him?”

“Looks like,” Murtaugh says. “Maybe they weren’t in possession of all the facts.”

“Can be dangerous, going into something without the full picture,” Riggs says, but it doesn’t quite sound like agreement, and his smile is the one Bailey’s seen him use sometimes when someone is about to get very upset. 

“I agree,” Murtaugh says. “How about we all take this as an object lesson in getting the facts before we go rushing in?”

Bailey shakes her head and gives up on the whole thing. Riggs is right there, back to his usual self, and she clearly didn’t get enough sleep last night or something, but the weird undercurrents these two have going on are not going to help her get her job done, so as she checks one more time it’s all done here for now and leaves to find her car. 

Avery is right about the paperwork, and she can be very sure that whether Riggs is being his usual brand of weird or not, he won’t be the one doing it.


	43. Chapter 43

Riggs doesn’t know what excuse Murtaugh or Nate or anyone gives for having the paramedics check him out. He knows he’s fine. All he did was have one fight, carry a guy a few steps and hide in a room while other people had all the fun. Oh, and nearly have his throat crushed, but what’s a little throat-crushing between friends?

Besides, as far as anyone except Murtaugh knows, he just went in and helped arrest a bunch of guys, same as the rest of the people he works with. Guys with guns, and Bailey’s apparently told several people he took down eleven guys with moves that looked like they were from the Bourne Identity, but he’s done worse and walked away. 

Which is more than can be said for Eliot right now. 

“We’re sure this is accurate?” Riggs asks, looking up from the file Avery has reluctantly allowed Murtaugh to show him. He hasn’t opened it yet. He’s tapped his fingers against the cover and turned it around a few times, but he hasn’t opened it. “Because it’s not like it’s the first file we’ve had on him.”

“And not like you believed the last one,” Murtaugh says. “But then that one was a complete lie, right?”

“And we know this one isn’t?”

Murtaugh leans in from the chair he’s pulled up to the side of Riggs’ desk and lowers his voice. 

“You got sucked in by people, I get that. You saw something in this guy that reminded you of…of you, but that first file? Was a paradise of dreams compared to this one.”

“You mean Eliot’s gone through even worse than it said in that other file?”

“I mean he’s done worse than I ever wanted to know about!”

Murtaugh glances around, but no-one seems to have noticed the outburst. Of course, Murtaugh and him blowing up at each other is probably just background to them all by now. People can adapt quickly to all sorts of explosions, Riggs knows. It’s how they cope afterward that counts.

“The case I was drafted in to help with still isn’t done,” Riggs says, and keeps to himself the thought that neither Nate Ford or Parker seem to the type to walk away and leave a girl in that sort of situation, whether they’ve got Eliot or Riggs to help them or not. And they do still have Quinn, who’s managed to ghost away from the scene without anyone seeming to work out Riggs has a kind of twin. “And it turns out someone was after Eliot. How do we know this isn’t just more of that?”

“Riggs, are you listening to yourself? This comes from high up in the government, or the army. Or both. I don’t even know. Are you telling me you think someone got up today and decided to pin all this crap on someone innocent?”

“It didn’t flag up when we ran his prints the first time.”

“These things take time.” Murtaugh looks like he wants to lean in closer, but he’s already practically sitting on Riggs. “Man, just…just read it. Me? I am not going to be sleeping tonight. I am going to be sitting up thinking about my beautiful wife and my beautiful kids and thanking God that this Eliot Spencer is cuffed to a hospital bed and that he can’t come anywhere near them. So I never want to look in that file again. But you? It’s not like you sleep anyway. Maybe it’ll knock this hero worship or whatever it is out of your head. Get you some damn sense back.”

And whether he thinks he said all he needs to or just all he can bring himself to, Murtaugh gets up and leaves, rubbing a hand over his head and looking like he wants to delete the whole day from his life. It’s not a new look on him, but it is one Riggs is more used to causing directly. It’s not the first time Murtaugh has been worried for him, though, and Riggs rubs at his own chest, at the jagged feeling that’s settled under his breastbone at the thought, and refuses to think about what it means. 

He has other things to think about. 

The ear-bud was vanished by Parker back at the crime scene, and the whole team have just…gone. Riggs hasn’t been by the bar yet, but before he walked away Nate Ford told him not to bother. More than that: he told Riggs they were leaving, and Riggs still doesn’t think he quite believes it, but when Riggs asked about Eliot the guy shrugged. Shrugged. And said sometimes people had to be cut loose. 

Eliot’s team have told Riggs that they’ve abandoned Eliot, and Murtaugh believes what’s in the files. 

“What have I gotten myself into?” he asks the air around him, and opens the file.


	44. Chapter 44

He’s in a bed this time. Eliot knows that before he’s even properly awake, can feel the relative softness of it under him. The noises and the quality of the air and the scents tell him he’s in a hospital, and that’s far better than the last time he woke up, and he can’t bring himself to full consciousness anyway, and Parker told him not to fight, so he gives in and slips back under.

The next time he wakes up, Eliot stays still and quiet. Still in hospital, but the squeak of a sole on a tile floor tells him he’s under guard. Not a surprise. Disappointing, but not a surprise. Neither are the cuffs. He’s bound at wrists and ankles again. He doesn’t fight those, either. 

He heard Parker talking on the comms and she wasn’t talking to Hardison. When he was outside, being loaded into the ambulance, he saw Nate in the distance, standing and watching. The situation has escalated since Eliot was taken, probably in ways he hasn’t worked out yet. 

No-one gave him an ear-bud in the brief time Parker was with him before he was loaded onto a stretcher. None of the team came with him, or hadn’t before he was knocked out with a different drug to the one he’s had in his system for far too long. He doesn’t know the plan. 

It’s possible the plan is to leave him. He’s had that one locked away in the back of his mind since he first joined the team. It’s covered in dust now and hasn’t been near the top of his assumptions in a real long time, but it’s still, always, there. Sometimes, even people as brilliant as Nate or Parker can’t get everyone out. Whatever Nate said that time, about Eliot never dying in any plan, he’d rather they walked away than risked themselves if it’s too dangerous. 

Back when Nate said it, he didn’t believe the guy, anyway. Hell, if any of them might be slated to die when a plan ticked from A to B to every other letter in the list, it would be the hitter. He got what Nate was about though, trying to tell him he wouldn’t be left, that his team wouldn’t abandon him. Over the years, he’s come to believe that. 

They came for him in that room, when he was surrounded by armed men. The team got Nate out of a prison before. Hell, Parker and Hardison refused to leave Eliot in DC during a terrorist attack. He doesn’t know the plan, but he knows there is one. If he hasn’t been told it, it’s because he doesn’t need to know, which means whichever mastermind is running the con trusts Eliot doesn’t need to do anything, or that he’ll do it without being in the loop.

In the meantime, he takes stock, and lets himself heal, and stays small and quiet, and doesn’t fight. Until he gets new orders, or works out his own plan, he’ll follow the last instructions Parker gave him.


	45. Chapter 45

Cahill must have been watching Riggs for a while, where he’s stretched out on the couch where they meet for sessions, but by this point that’s just part of the routine. It’s comforting, in a way. 

“I tell you, blankets,” he says, not bothering to sit up. He does rub both hands over his eyes and turn his head so he’s looking at her. “When did you get here?”

“It’s late,” she says. “I was finishing up paperwork. What’s your excuse?”

“I like the ambiance in here,” he says, and sees the way she tilts her head, the corner of her mouth tightening in that way it has when she’s taking another hit of his crap. “You hear about the ultimate evil we arrested today?”

“I’m on my way to interview him in a few minutes,” Cahill says. “The hospital just called to say he woke up. You want to come with me?”

“This some new therapy practice I don’t know about?” Riggs asks, squinting at her. “Take a depressed cop to sit in on your talk with a serial killer?”

“He isn’t a serial killer,” Cahill says. “Not in the classic sense. And why do you find it so hard to believe what we’ve been told about him?”

Riggs shrugs, which probably looks weird when he’s lying down. Cahill doesn’t comment. 

“You talked to the guy. Does he seem like he’d…like the sort to…?”

“I already told you, he seemed like a vet with PTSD, but he was acting. From the files, he’s good at it. Maybe he fooled us both. And you’ve come up against people before who don’t seem like they’d do the things they do. How many cold-blooded killers really walk around looking the part?”

Riggs files away the ‘maybe’. 

“I’m not doubting he’d kill,” he says, which perhaps isn’t the best thing to say to help Eliot, if Eliot does deserve help. “But…families? Kids? And the torture? He really strike you as someone who’d…?”

Riggs spent hours with people who were going out of their minds with worry over Eliot Spencer, people who gave every impression that Eliot is warm and loving and vital to them. Hell, Riggs ate food the man had cooked for his family. It’s not like a guy can’t be those things and also a monster, and maybe Parker would look past it. Maybe. He isn’t sure. But Hardison was an open book, after a fashion, and Sophie was so… And even Nate, who looked the kind of person to have some really personal demons camping in his skull, didn’t make Riggs think a guy as damaged and as damaging as the one in that file would find a place in his heart. 

Besides, Riggs spent time in a small room with Eliot. He saw the way the guy reacted to Parker. He picked up on deadly but he didn’t get the rest of it. 

“I think we can’t ever be sure what someone will do,” Cahill says. “Not even always ourselves.”

Riggs nods, and rolls to his feet. 

“I’m not buying it. But I think I’d like to see what you think of the guy now, if you mean it about me tagging along.”

And his trailer isn’t going to give him any answers. Cahill nods, and Riggs leaves the office with her.


	46. Chapter 46

Whoever this man is and whatever he’s done, he looks small and quiet in that hospital bed. The lighting is low, and Cahill considers raising it, but some people speak more freely in the part-light and she isn’t trying to heal Spencer, here. She’s collecting what she can. 

Cahill smiles as she enters the room, expression calm and professional as she waits from him to look over. He doesn’t look. He just lies there with his face turned up to the ceiling and his body unresisting. 

He doesn’t look like the kind of man who could break someone’s neck without warning, but neither does Riggs look like he could jump from a roof and carry a pregnant woman through a window, and she knows that’s happened. 

Behind her, she hears Riggs step into the room, sounding more hesitant than he normally does, and she files that away. She may have more than one objective in mind here. 

The man in the bed, Eliot Spencer or Ellis Reid or whatever his name really is, does turn his head then, frowning. He talk to Riggs, clearly ignoring Cahill. 

“What’re you doing here?” he asks, and the drawl isn’t as thick as it was before, but it’s still there. So, his real accent, or one he’s been using enough it comes easily. “Figured you’d be done with me by now.”

Riggs stops at the other side of the bed, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets and shrugging. His hair is falling into his face. 

“Maybe I wanted to see how you are,” he says.

“I almost collapsed your throat,” Spencer says, in a tone that doesn’t match the content, like violence and pain are distant to him, or too familiar to be worthy of note. “Even if you haven’t read what they’ve dug up on me, that ought to be enough to keep you away.”

No mention of anything being planted or false, Cahill notes. No sign of Riggs moving away from the bed, either. His body language is turned toward Spencer and he might not be looking quite at him, but Riggs sometimes doesn’t look at people she’s almost sure he likes. As she watches, he lifts a hand and rubs at his throat, his lips sketching a kind of smile.

“Case you hadn’t noticed,” Riggs says, “I’m not exactly known for staying away from danger.”

Spencer doesn’t say anything to that, but he’s watching Riggs with the kind of look Cahill is more used to seeing on someone in her profession. It’s assessing. 

“Detective Riggs is here for my protection,” she says, and sees the way Riggs’ eyes dart to her. “That okay?”

Spencer finally rolls his head her way, that long hair of his catching the light from the hallway. His eyes glimmer in the part-light and she resists taking a step back. She can see why Avery is wary of the man. She thinks he might see she’s wary, too. Being evaluated by her own patients isn’t a new thing for her, but mostly it’s bluster or self-protection or something else she can categorize and ignore. She can’t ignore this. 

For a moment, she wants to call Riggs over to her, to put him between her and this man whose file is full of horrors. Being dispassionate works better when she isn’t looking right at someone who is on record as having killed whole families, who isn’t reported to have hunted down and slaughtered so many men and women in so many ways. And she’s far too experienced to be thrown by a killer looking normal. They mostly look normal, whatever it is people think of when they use that word. 

This man does not look normal. Even lying in a hospital bed, he looks intent. Dangerous. 

Then he smiles.

“Whatever you need, darlin’,” he says, and closes his lips against any other words.

She sees the lack of give in them, something he has in common with Riggs, even though Riggs’ lack of speech is rooted in pain and in desperation, and his occasional bursts of sharing are rooted in the same. This man might speak to her, or at her, depending on how he tries to take control, but she’s going to have to work for anything meaningful. For anything real. 

“You mind if I sit?” she asks. 

He continues smiling, a soft curve of his lips that warms his eyes and must charm a lot of people into a lot of things, and he tips his head on the pillow in a clear invitation. It’s subtle, but it’s impossible to mistake. So, he has excellent non-verbal communication skills and he knows how to use them to his advantage. Right now, he’s got her off balance. 

She smiles back and pulls up a seat. This is going to take a while. 

“Riggs, you want to get settled?” she asks, pulling her notepad from her bag and clicking her pen. “I think Mr Spencer and I have a lot to talk about.”

“I’m good,” Riggs says, not moving. 

Perhaps he thinks he can stop Spencer more easily from where he is, if it becomes necessary. The files certainly indicate that being cuffed wrists and ankles is far from a certain way to keep the guy secure. Of course, there are guards outside the room and the door is remaining open, so even without Riggs and his gun she should be safe. 

“Mr Spencer?” she says.

“Eliot,” Spencer says. “I insist. If we’re gonna be spending quality time together, we shouldn’t be so formal. And you are?”

Over his body, she sees Riggs fold his arms over his own chest and stare down at Eliot Spencer as though he isn’t sure what he’s looking at. What bothers Cahill more is that he seems interested in finding out, and interest in Riggs can be a risky thing. 

“Dr Cahill,” she says. 

“You got a first name, Doctor?” he asks.

She can only imagine how many people have fallen for that tone in his voice. If she met him at a bar, she’d be tempted herself. Assuming she didn’t catch sight of the steel in his eyes. 

“Yes,” she says. “So, Eliot, how about you tell me a little about yourself. There must be a lot the files don’t tell me.”

“Oh, I guarantee it,” Spencer says. “Doctor. Where exactly would you like me to start, sweetheart?” He shifts his right hand, lifting it the fraction of an inch it will move, and winks. “Not like I’ve got anyplace I can be.”

Riggs reacts to that, his chin coming up and his fingers gripping at his own sleeves, and Cahill adjusts her chair to make sure she has both men clearly in sight even when she’s just looking over the edge of her notepad. 

“Glad to hear it,” she says, and means it. 

This is not a man who should ever be out on the streets again, not if only a segment of his file is true, and given the high-level clearance stamped all over parts of the paperwork, it’s either true or invented by someone high up some branch of something. That’s not her remit, though, and she doesn’t normally have reason to doubt what’s in a file, so she isn’t sure why the thought has even drifted into her mind. 

“It say anything in those files about Venezuela?” Spencer asks, tilting his head in a way that makes it seem like he’s about to share some risque and adorable anecdote with her. “Because I promise you, that’s a good one.”

“Sure,” Cahill says. She doesn’t shiver. She’s too good for that. This isn’t someone she can afford to slip up with in any way. “Why don’t you tell me about that. What was so special about Venezuela?” 

“You kill anybody there?” Riggs asks, too cheerfully.

Spencer chuckles. Chuckles. Like this is a party and he’s entertaining guests. 

“Not the time I’m thinking of,” he says, and launches into some story that tells Cahill exactly nothing about anything, except this one is going to be far from easy to crack. 

Riggs listens in silence the whole time, his gaze never leaving Spencer’s face, and Cahill makes two sets of notes in her notepad.


	47. Chapter 47

From his place on the other side of the bed, Riggs listens as Eliot spins a tale about mistaken identities and a foreign princess and at least two exotic animals he’s sure have never been in Venezuela. It sounds like something out of an action comedy and he can see no sign at all that Eliot is lying. The guy’s good. 

He remembers some of the things that are in the files, the bodies and the disappearances and the little boy who woke up to find his whole family cooling on the living-room floor. He tries to fit that together with the Eliot in the bed, the one smiling and smirking and flirting with Cahill, and…he can’t. He can’t fit it together with the Eliot from before, either, the one who cared so much about a girl he’d never met that he’d put himself in physical danger as part of a plot to get her out. 

Cahill adjust her legs, tapping the pen twice on the edge of her notepad, and Riggs frowns. The woman’s damn near impossible to throw, but she is definitely looking less comfortable than he’s used to. It’s not like Riggs hasn’t tried flirting with her: weaponized flirting is an old trick, and one he used a lot even before grief hollowed out what passed for his heart and left him numb to that whole side of human interaction. But he has never been as good at it as Eliot is. 

“You really expect me to believe all that?” Cahill asks, when Eliot winds down and looks away for a moment. 

The guy stretches, not able to move much with those cuffs on him, but undulating his body in a way that should probably be illegal. Riggs sees Cahill follow the movement, and damn, but Eliot is flexible.

“Don’t much care whether you believe me or not, darlin’,” Eliot says, sounding far too smug for someone in his position. He glances back at her from the corner of his eye. “Belief’s a funny thing, ain’t it?”

“How do you mean?” Cahill asks, and that is the light she gets in her eyes when she thinks she’s found a crack in the armor. 

Eliot isn’t really smiling anymore, but the lingering signs of it still warm his face. 

“You don’t believe a word I just said to you,” Eliot says. 

“Was I meant to?” she asks. 

There’s silence from both of them. Riggs looks from one to the other, noting the way they’re both holding themselves as though they’re relaxed, Eliot almost motionless on the bed and Cahill leaning back in the chair the way she does when she’s trying to make Riggs think his refusal to talk doesn’t bother her. 

Just as he’s about to break the quiet himself, Eliot drops the last of the smile completely.

“I’m thinking there’s a fair bit you’re supposed to be believing. You can make up your own mind about what I say.”

And he closes his eyes. 

“You’re saying what’s in the files is a lie?” Cahill asks. 

“Don’t know what’s in the files,” Eliot says, sounding disinterested. 

Cahill watches him for a few moments longer, a considering look on her face. With Eliot’s eyes closed, she’s not hiding her reactions as much. Riggs isn’t so sure she’s as unobserved as she thinks, but he’s willing to accept his views of what Eliot can and can’t do might be a little skewed. 

“You’ve been held in more than one foreign cell,” Cahill says, with the air of someone laying down a card. “You’ve been beaten, starved, dehydrated. Tortured. Is that true?”

One of Eliot’s hands, the one closest to Riggs, flexes and curls partway to a fist. There’s no sign of that in his voice when he speaks. Cahill probably can’t see it from where she is. He wonders whether Eliot’s just not thought about the fact Riggs will be able to see it, or whether he doesn’t care/ 

“They mention the water-boarding?” he asks. “Always a fun time.”

Riggs sees Cahill’s gaze snap up to him and he shrugs. The thing with the barrel and the water was far from fun, but for most of it he was hoping for a way out, the kind of way out Cahill and Murtaugh keep trying to get him to turn his back on. He doubts it was the same for Eliot, away in another country and held for longer than Riggs was. 

When Riggs looks back down at Eliot, it’s to see those eyes of his open a slit, enough that he sees Eliot watching him. There’s a faint frown on the guy’s face. Maybe sympathy. 

A second later, Eliot looks back at Cahill and the expression is gone. 

“I ain’t saying what’s in those files is a lie,” Eliot says. He sounds mild, in a way, but that hint of steel Riggs has heard before is lurking under it. “I’m saying it ain’t the truth. You can’t put the truth of that kind of thing in a file. You hear me?”

Riggs hears him. Riggs knows what he means, or thinks he does. Some of it, at least. Most people he knows who came back from even a relatively uneventful tour left a little piece of themselves behind, and guys like Eliot must have left whole bleeding chunks. The jury’s still out on whether most of those chunks belonged to Eliot, or to people he’d gone after. The file isn’t real clear on when, exactly, Eliot Spencer left the army at all. 

“And does the truth of it explain what happened after?” Cahill asks. 

“I don’t know what it says I did after,” Eliot says. “Don’t entirely know there is an after.”

But there is. For Eliot there is. Riggs has seen it. His after is Hardison and Parker and his whole scheming, scary family. Eliot isn’t alone in this world, unlike so many people who’ve been thrown back into civilian life only to find they don’t fit anymore. Except, Cahill doesn’t know about them, and as long as Murtaugh and Riggs keep their mouths shut about their information, Eliot can go on acting like he’s alone in whatever this is, and he can keep them out of it. 

“Death,” Cahill says. “A lot of death.” Her gaze sharpens and she taps her pen once against the notepad. “Did you really kill that teenager in Prague?”

Eliot’s jaw tightens, and this time his hand makes it almost the whole way to a fist before stopping, and easing back into an open hand, each finger settling against the bedding. 

“I ain’t talking about any people I killed,” Eliot says, and this time when he smiles, Cahill doesn’t hide the fact she sits back in her chair, as far from him as she can get without getting up and moving. “Whatever it says in that file, even if every word in it is something I’ve done, and the way I’ve done it, that still ain’t the truth. And it ain’t what’s gonna make you believe or not. And I enjoy talking with a pretty woman, but if you don’t mind, I’ve had a hell of a few days. Think I’m gonna get some rest now.”

Cahill tries asking other questions, and looks at Riggs as though he might have an idea, but Eliot’s closed his eyes again and this time he won’t open them. When Cahill tells Riggs she’ll try again tomorrow, and stands to leave, Riggs hesitates.

“I’m going to stay a while,” he says, when Cahill looks at him with a question on her face. “Guy like this, we’re probably safer all round with someone in the room.”

He knows it’s not standard protocol, but he sailed right past caring about protocol a long while back, and he can’t dismiss that almost clenched fist, or the way Eliot hasn’t outright denied what Cahill asked. Or the fact he’s not mentioned his team. 

There’s still a mystery here in this bed, and Eliot might be even less willing to speak with Cahill than he is, but that doesn’t mean Riggs is going to give up trying to find answers himself. Besides, Parker told him to stay with Eliot until she could come back for him, and part of Riggs feels like that hasn’t happened yet. 

Sure, they got the guy out of that room, but he’s just stuck in a different room now, with a different set of chains, and Riggs needs to get things settled in his mind. He needs to work out whether Eliot should be kept chained, or should be set free. 

He needs to work out what it is he believes.


	48. Chapter 48

Sophie holds her drink carefully, keeping any sign of the faint tremble from her fingers. It won’t help the others to see it. 

They had Eliot. They nearly had him, and they’ve let him slip through their fingers again. 

Parker strides up and down, smacking one hand into the palm of the other, and Hardison watches her from over the top of his laptop. Nate isn’t looking at anyone, but Sophie knows he’s aware. Of course he is. He’s Nate. The man can still be obtuse about emotions and sometimes gets bullheaded about what he insists someone needs or wants, but he can’t be getting this wrong. 

“We shouldn’t have left him,” Parker says, for at least the tenth time in the last hour. “We should have got him out and brought him with us.”

“Not a good idea, Parker,” Nate says. 

“This is a bad idea,” Parker says. “We’ve stolen an ambulance from a crime scene before. We stole one for you that time with the bank!”

“I hadn’t just had my identity and history sent to the police with instructions to take me in,” Nate says, and there might be something of a snap there. “That time you did leave me.”

“You handcuffed yourself to a railing,” Parker says. “We’d have stolen you and taken you with us if you weren’t being so…being so…”

She stalls, her mouth opening and shutting, and Nate finally looks up from the paper he’s reading and meets her gaze.

“So what, Parker?” he asks, seemingly still mildly.

“So Nate!”

Each time her pacing brings her around to face Nate, she glares at a point slightly off to the side of his face, her expression stony. Sophie would try to talk her down, but Parker in this sort of mood needs time. And action. And Sophie can’t offer her any action to take. 

“My girl has a point,” Hardison says. “Not really seeing why we couldn’t get our boy the hell out of there and sort it out later.”

“You said you couldn’t track the source of the information,” Nate reminds him. “And you said you couldn’t wipe it clean. And Eliot’s hurt, which might seem impossible to the two of you, but I promise you he is capable of being harmed badly enough he can’t just run and fight his way through everything.”

“We get that,” Hardison says. “Guy might act like he’s Superman, but we know he’s human. Nate, we’ve been working together without you or Soph for a while now. And we watch out for each other. And, yeah, we might have a tiny bit of a habit of thinking Eliot will come through anything, but you know what? Generally, he kind of does. And the times it looks like he might not? We call him on it. So, no, not gonna argue he needs medical care, but how is that gonna help if he ends up dragged away and locked up for life? He’ll go mad, shut up like that.”

“He’ll want to run,” Parker says. “And he won’t be able to. I told him not to. I told him not to fight.”

Sophie considers standing, considers going to Parker. Because she’s right: Eliot might suffer through more than he normally would if it’s something Parker’s told him to do. She doesn’t think he’ll be kept locked down, though. If Eliot’s healed enough to make it out and they still haven’t gone for him, he’ll make his own way. The man’s a survivor. The issue will be whether his view of healed enough is one even close to something an actual doctor would sign off on.

“The real problem is finding out who sent that information and why,” she says. “That’s why we left him. So he could get medical care and we could deal with whoever is trying to destroy him. We need to clear that before we get him back. But Parker? We are going to get him back.”

Parker snorts, shaking her hair back and slapping her hand into her palm one more time.

“Of course we are.”

That’s not her truthful voice. At least, it’s not the voice she uses when she’s entirely satisfied that what she’s saying is correct. 

“We are gonna get him back, mama,” Hardison says. “Depend on it. Together, right?”

Parker stops and turns to face Hardison, and Sophie knows this is one of those code-words the three of them have, the ones that snuck in more and more over the last year or so the team were together. It was one of the ways she knew, even before Eliot said it outright as they loaded shovels and rope into the boot of a car, that he’d be staying with Parker and with Hardison for good. It was one way she knew the team of five was made up of one pair and one trio. 

“Together,” Parker says. And her mouth firms. “Or not at all.”

“Of course we’re getting him back,” Nate says, sounding faintly exasperated. “Eliot can cope with being in a hospital bed for a few days-

“Days?” Hardison asks, and he sounds more horrified than exasperated. “Days, Nate? I’ve checked the reports and communications. They ain’t just got him in a bed. They got him cuffed to a bed. Wrists and ankles. You really see Eliot being okay with that?”

“He’s been through a lot worse,” Nate says, as though he really expects that to be comforting. 

Sometimes, Sophie despairs. She really does.

“That don’t mean he was okay with it!” Hardison says. “And what if he has…if he has…flashbacks or something?”

For all he stutters over the words like he’s pulling random ideas from thin air, there’s real nervousness in Hardison’s body language, and in the modulations in his voice.

“Has he had flashbacks before?” she asks, and sees Hardison and Parker freeze. “He has. Well, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised, but are they very likely?”

Hardison shrugs, looking unhappy, and at first she isn’t sure he’s going to answer. It’s not something Eliot’s ever revealed to Sophie himself, and the man can be very private. If Hardison and Parker know something about Eliot’s mental health that Sophie doesn’t know, it has to be because of their increased intimacy or due to a con she wasn’t present for. Either way, it might feel like a betrayal to Hardison to tell her more. 

“If Eliot’s going to react badly enough it will endanger us retrieving him, we need to know,” Nate says. “We’re relying on Riggs continuing to show an interest as it is.”

“Oh, he will,” Sophie says. Even in the middle of the mess that’s brought Nate and her back to their family, Sophie is warmed by the way they all look so trustingly at her. It’s good, being able to show her skills. It’s the closest she’s come in years to being really seen, when she’s with her team. Oh, Nate sees her. Of course he does. But having more than one person know her is grounding. Comforting. She imagines being cut off from them, unable to get back to them, and suppresses a shudder. “Riggs is hooked. He sees Eliot as someone…safe, in a way.”

“Safe?” Nate asks, raising an eyebrow. 

Sophie tilts her head.

“Eliot can be very reassuring,” she says. “Admittedly, mostly it’s not when he’s being terrifyingly competent with violence.”

“I find that kinda reassuring,” Hardison says, and Sophie notes the way his micro-expressions give him away. She doesn’t add ‘and hot’ for him, because she doubts anyone in the room needs informing. “But, yeah, he kinda scares most people out of their wits with the whole ‘I could kill you with my pinkie’ vibe.”

“I like that vibe,” Parker says. 

“I know you do, baby,” Hardison says. “But why does Riggs? Guy not seen enough violence in his life?”

“Riggs has a death-wish,” Sophie says. “He wants to rejoin his wife, but he can’t end his own life. It’s in Dr Cahill’s notes, but it’s clear from spending any amount of time with the man. And he’s a protector who puts himself at risk to save others.”

“Kinda like our Eliot,” Hardison says, frowning. 

“Eliot doesn’t have a wife he wants to die to be with,” Parker says, crossing her arms. She’s paused in her pacing and looks to be holding herself in place. 

Parker needs a plan, and Sophie needs to make her feel more that this is one.

“No, but Riggs is picking up on something in Eliot that draws him. Perhaps what we’re talking about, the PTSD, is something he feels they have in common. Maybe it’s just some sort of shared background. Eliot’s not exactly as simple as a lot of people like to think he is. It could be a lot of things. But Riggs feels some connections, almost a fascination. He’s invested. We can use that.”

“Riggs is more dangerous than Eliot,” Nate says, and holds up a hand when they all turn to look at him. “No, he is. In a way. Eliot’s in control of himself, whatever it is he’s controlling. From what I saw, even without the reports Hardison found for us, Riggs is barely in control of himself at all, let alone his grief. And he knows it. That’s what’s drawing him to Eliot: he sees someone who’s wrestled control out of a background that would have taken most people’s away. That’s why Eliot’s safe to him.”

“Except our mystery information goblin has dropped a bomb on that,” Hardison says. “Have you read this? Have you read what it says Eliot’s done?”

“Yes, Hardison,” Nate says, and there is no sign of shock or horror there.

Not for the first time, Sophie wonders what events of Eliot’s past Nate’s been hording all these years. She knows the two of them have an understanding the others don’t have, a strand of connection unique to them. Eliot always kept an eye out for Nate, was the first to express concern or to point out if Nate teetered too close to some edge. Sophie did that too, in her own way, but there was always a different quality to it, and she walked in at the end of more than one conversation between them that made her think Nate did the same for Eliot, in his way. 

“But Riggs hasn’t walked away,” Sophie says, “and I don’t think he will. When have you ever seen Eliot properly lose control? No, Eliot will be keeping everyone else off balance, preventing them from getting a firm grip of him mentally even if they have him tied down physically, and that’s going to be its own draw for Riggs. He’s resisting letting people get hold of him, you know. From what Dr Cahill writes, Riggs has been offered help by more than one person and he can’t quite bring himself to accept it. But some part of him is looking for a way to accept help, or to find a way to ease his pain, and he can learn from Eliot.”

“Yeah, because Eliot’s the poster-child for opening up and letting people help,” Hardison says.

“It’s more complicated than that, Hardison,” Sophie says. “Listen, for a range of reasons, most of which I doubt he’s aware of himself, Detective Martin Riggs will keep an eye on Eliot. He won’t be able to help himself. And we have Quinn ready, don’t we?”

“He’s punching things in the workout room,” Parker says. “He’s complained about having to play Riggs five times.”

“Well, he’d better accept he’s going to have to do it again,” Nate says. “Guys, we’re not going to let this go on too long. I promise you.”

A beep on Haridson’s laptop pauses the talk, and when Hardison swears they all tense. 

“What is it?” Parker asks.

“Set up a warning for any mention of Eliot,” Hardison says. “They’re sending someone to interview and collect him.”

“Who?” Nate asks. 

“Conrad.” Hardison looks up and the worry in his eyes is so clear it’s screaming. “Nate… It’s the CIA. They’re sending more than police after him. We don’t get this solved and him out before this guy turns up, we’re gonna have to break him out of some government facility. Assuming we can even find him. And you saw what he was like after that con. Guy was about ready to take anyone’s head off for a fortnight. I swear he wasn’t sleeping. And that was from something he could have walked out of at any time.”

Nate doesn’t look as worried as the others do, or as worried as Sophie feels. He looks one step away from steepling his fingers.

“Conrad did say he had his eye on us now,” Nate says, tone thoughtful. “I had wondered if he just hadn’t played his cards yet.”

“You think this is who planted that information?” Hardison asks. “You think it’s who set this whole thing up? Seems a pretty weird way to catch a guy. They must know where Eliot is-”

“Possibly,” Nate says. “But getting hold of him is different. Keeping hold of him is different. They get someone with a grudge to soften him up first? Maybe make us think he’s dead? Then we don’t go looking. And this way, it must be a back-up. No. Yeah, this is Plan B, but it has more chance of working. Puts Eliot in a situation where he’s known to local law enforcement, so he can’t grift his way out. He’s hurt, so he can’t fight his way out.”

“And they really think we won’t get him out?” Sophie asks. 

“They might have plans for that, too,” Nate says. “But we have an advantage.”

“They don’t know Riggs and Quinn look the same,” Parker says, and grins. 

With her arms still wrapped tight around herself, there’s nothing warm or reassuring in it, but Sophie finds it relaxes her anyway.


	49. Chapter 49

Eliot must sleep. Riggs watches the relaxed lines of his body become more so as the guy passes from showing he’s relaxed to actually being relaxed. As before, the performance is only revealed once reality kicks in. 

Riggs sits in that chair and watches. He should go home, to Miranda’s cove, and try to get some sleep himself. This isn’t the first time he’s avoided that whole rest after a trauma thing. Cahill’s told him, more than once, he should sleep, that he should eat, that he should do something after one of his intense, dangerous experiences other than drink or brood. Most times, he ignores her. The rest, he goes to Murtaugh. He’s been doing a good job of not thinking on that one too closely. Right now, though, Murtaugh thinks Eliot’s guilty on all charges, and Riggs can’t bring himself to the point of just agreeing. So. Not the Murtaugh’s tonight. He’ll sit in this chair and cope with the bruises and the after-effects of adrenaline. 

Besides, Eliot’s been through worse than Riggs has. Far worse. 

The beeping of the monitor tells him Eliot’s awake, and he might not know otherwise unless the guy spoke, which he doesn’t. Sitting forward in his chair, Riggs attempts a smile. He still isn’t sure whether Eliot’s the monster it paints in those files or the man he saw with his own eyes, but he uses smiles against everyone in any case. 

“You getting enough sleep there, Sleeping Beauty?” he asks. “Doctors say you need it.”

“What are you still doing here?” Eliot asks, his eyes still closed and his lips barely moving. “Shouldn’t you have run clear across the state at what you’ve read? Gotta say, man - didn’t figure you for someone who’d sit watching over a bastard who’s killed kids.”

Thing is, Eliot sounds like he doesn’t care, either about Riggs or about the deaths of children at his own hands, and Riggs has no clue if it’s because Eliot did that and sees no issue with it, or if it’s because he knows it’s not true. 

“Yeah, well,” he says, and gives Eliot the easiest reason. “Someone should keep guard on you from right here. Can’t say I trust those restraints to be enough.”

“You keeping everyone else safe from me, then?” Eliot asks. He doesn’t sound like he believes him. If anything, he sounds vaguely amused. 

“Something like that,” Riggs says. “Figure someone has to. Right? Stuff in that file…” He shakes his head and whistles. “Gotta tell you, man. That is some resume you got there.”

“Yeah, well,” Eliot says. “That’s the thing about resumes. You can’t believe half of what’s on them.”

“Only half?” Riggs asks, because even half of what’s on there, even the milder stuff, is still quite the story. And it still includes a hell of a lot of death. “Which half?”

Eliot doesn’t answer. 

Riggs waits a while, but the beeping doesn’t change and now he knows Eliot’s awake he can see the guy’s not really sleeping. He’s just…lying there. In silence. With his eyes closed. Even Riggs, as much as he doesn’t let himself care what other people think, would have trouble closing someone out so completely like this. 

Leaning forward, he jabs Eliot’s side. The reaction’s instant, the guy’s eyes opening and locking on Riggs’ face and his body tensing, jerking the restraints. Riggs has faced down a lot of violent people in his time, a lot of violent, angry people, but hardly any of them managed the level of rage Eliot packs into his glare. 

Riggs is already sitting back, arms folded and smile in place.

“No-one ever teach you ignoring people’s rude?” he asks.

“You think I killed a bunch of kids,” Eliot says. “Me ignoring you is really what crosses the line?”

Riggs shrugs. 

“Not sold on the killing part yet,” he says. “Let’s say I’m open to being persuaded you didn’t do it.”

“How’d you figure?” Eliot asks. The anger’s simmered down and is layered over again with that air of casual disinterest, but it hasn’t quite made it all the way back to where it was. There’s a cold core of anger in his expression that isn’t shifting. “You get handed a file by your boss, and he gets it from somewhere up the chain of command, what exactly about it’s making you reject what’s being said?”

“I just don’t buy them,” Riggs says.

Eliot grimaces.

“Don’t matter if you buy it,” he says. “Plenty of people do.”

Still, he hasn’t denied it, but Riggs is finding it harder and harder to graft any of the acts in the files onto the man in the bed in front of him. 

“I don’t think you did it,” Riggs says. “I think you’re being framed.”

“Why are you really still here?” Eliot asks, and this time his eyes are icy as he meets Riggs’ gaze. “You got a place to live. To sleep, anyway, or whatever it is you do that passes for living. And you got cases to solve. Plenty of killers out there. If you don’t even think I am one, then you got no cause to be guarding me. What you still doing sitting here? Really?”

Riggs still has a smile playing about his lips, but he’s past thinking he’s fooling Eliot in any way at all. Habit, maybe. Perhaps he can’t bring himself to admit it without at least pretending he’s playing it off as a joke.

“Parker told me to stay,” he says. “She said to stay with you until she could come back for you. She hasn’t got you back yet, so…I’m staying.”

There’s a pause as Eliot regards him, unmoving. 

“Well,” Eliot says, his lip curving up at one side into something that might be a sneer, might be a smile. “ain’t you a good little puppy.”

And he turns his head to look up at the ceiling, shutting Riggs out.


	50. Chapter 50

Cahill taps the end of her pen against her lips and frowns. It’s not like her notes after a session with just Riggs are always easy to turn into something reasonable. The guy is by no means unique in terms of his grief, but his particular combination of background and coping mechanisms is far from the usual run. 

This Eliot Spencer, though…

And that’s before she gets to Riggs with Eliot. She isn’t sure what the hell to make of that. Some kind of interest was to be expected, given Riggs’ history and the way he was with the previous vet to cross his path on a case. She was prepared for him to display sympathy, even empathy, when they thought they were dealing with Reid. Riggs’ response fell broadly within the expected parameters for him, even if he did seem more concerned for the guy’s whereabouts than made sense. But Spencer is a different creature entirely. Spencer’s the kind of person who would normally turn Riggs feral in an effort to bring him down. Instead, he…defended him. 

She didn’t feel like defending the man in that bed. Being defended from him, yes, but not being defensive of him. No-one should be able to be that charming in chains. Padded cuffs, anyway. 

There’s a half-full glass by her right hand, and she’s going to have to top it up soon, she just knows it. 

“Are you busy, Doctor?” a voice asks from the doorway, the accent a soft modulation that sounds like it comes from somewhere on the East coast. “Cahill, isn’t it?”

Looking up, Cahill sees a woman in an elegant suit, her dark hair arranged in a way that suggests real style as well as professionalism. 

“Reviewing notes,” she says. “And yes, it’s Doctor Cahill. Can I help you?”

“Doctor Carter,” the woman says, stepping into Cahill’s office with her hand outstretched. “I consult with the FBI. Today’s revelations have taken us all by surprise and I wondered if you had a minute to chat about it? I’d value your insight.”

“FBI?” Cahill sits back and picks up her drink, taking a swallow before she replies. “Does that mean you worked with Eliot Spencer?”

Carter stops a short way from the desk and look uncomfortable. There’s embarrassment there, and a hint of guilt. Disbelief, too. The woman has clearly been thrown by this, and feels she should have spotted it.

“I can’t quite believe he…” she says, trailing into nothing and shaking her head. The shadow of a smile touches her lips and the fingers of her right hand play over the strap of her purse in a way she probably isn’t aware of. “I went out for a drink with him. Can you imagine?”

“You worked with him for a while,” Cahill says. 

The files are vague, but reading between the lines it looks like someone matching Spencer’s description worked with the FBI more than once over the last seven years or so. 

Carter shakes her head again and sighs. 

“He helped us. Honestly, he seemed more invested in bringing people to justice than half of the agents I’ve worked with. And to find out his name isn’t even his name… When I think of what he’s been accused of, I just… Well, it makes me feel sick. He came to my house. My house, Doctor Cahill. Thank God I invited Agent Hagen round the same night or who knows what could have happened.”

Cahill sets her glass down and frowns.

“You don’t think he’d have attacked someone he knew in their home? Someone he was working with?”

“Don’t you?” Carter asks. She has her hand at the base of her own throat, as though imagining staving off an attack. The files do mention Spencer killing by asphyxiation more than once. “Since we heard, my mind’s been spinning. He could have turned on any one of us, just like that.”

She snaps her fingers, and Cahill sees it. Just for a split second, she sees Spencer moving, fast and precise the way one report describes him. Just for one flash of imagination, she sees him wrapping his arms around Doctor Carter and choking the life from her. The image won’t sustain itself.

“No,” she says. “No, that doesn’t fit the file.”

“It doesn’t?” Doctor Carter asks. “I admit, I’m normally much better at this, but…”

“Being close can make it harder,” Cahill says. “Here, why don’t you take a seat. Have a drink. We can talk.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” Carter says. “I know it’s late. To be honest, I was surprised to still find you here, but I just got out of a meeting, and I thought it couldn’t hurt to try.”

It is late, and Cahill should have gone home hours ago, but she waves that off and gets Doctor Carter a glass of brandy. She could do with another professional to talk this over with, too, even if the woman is so shaken by what’s happened that her instincts are off. 

“Did you think you knew him well?” she asks, once they’re both settled on the more comfortable chairs she keeps in the room. “I’ve only spoken with him twice, and I’m still not sure what to make of it.”

“I thought of him as a friend,” Carter says, tipping her head forward and pressing her fingers to her temple. “And as I say, he asked me out on a date once, and I went. Well, I went for an hour.”

“You got called away?” Cahill asks, and she knows what that can be like. 

“No,” Carter says, her brows pinching as she looks up. “No, he was. Now I wonder what for. It makes me want to cross reference every case he was ever involved with and every murder in the city we were in, and if I go down that route… Well.”

She throws her glass back and Cahill fetches the brandy without asking. 

“Thanks,” Carter says. 

“No problem.” Cahill sets the brandy bottle down on the table in between them. Technically, she’s been off duty for hours and she only has the brandy because someone bought it for her as a thank-you. If it helps this Doctor Carter to cope with the shaking up of her working world, then Cahill’s okay with that. Avery doesn’t have to know. “And like I say, I don’t think he’d have hurt you. From what the files say, he didn’t usually know his victims. If anything, he seems to have a protective streak about the people he works with. There’s more than one incident during his time in service.”

“Oh, yes.” Carter nods. “The young solider he took under his wing. Robins, was it? He told me about that. A little, at least.” She drops her gaze to stare into her glass and speaks even more softly. “Although he didn’t tell it quite the way it is in those files. Not that he was very forthcoming with details on most things. He more told anecdotes to amuse, I think. Still…I didn’t think he’d do…that to anyone.”

Her doubt is clear. Cahill knows which event she’s thinking of, and it involves more than beating up some other soldiers as payback or as warning. Knives were involved, and mutilation, and Cahill tries to picture finding out Riggs did something like it. She can’t. 

Thing is, she can see Carter’s having trouble seeing Spencer in that role.

“It can take time, when we find out someone isn’t who we thought they were,” she says. “Time and talking it over with other people.”

“Well, I can’t exactly gossip with my girlfriends about this one,” Carter says, and tries a smile. It looks painful. “And the others I work with are just as upset as I am. Hagen looked ready to find a deep, dark cell to throw Eliot into. They were close. Are close, I guess. I don’t know how long it takes to cut those sorts of ties. Have you heard how insistent she was we get him out?”

Cahill did hear about one agent being fiercely determined to get someone out of that building. This Spencer seems to have a knack for inspiring interest and devotion. She recalls the way his smile warmed his eyes and takes another drink herself.

“If it’s any consolation,” she says, “he is very charming. And skilled at controlling a conversation.”

Carter nods, but she doesn’t seem reassured yet. 

“Tell me,” Cahill says, “did he have a lot of influence with other agents? A tendency to draw the more…troubled people into his orbit?”

Carter looks thoughtful. It seems to settle her, having a problem to work on.

“Yes,” she says, slowly. “Now that you mention it, he’s always been able to bring people who are struggling somewhat into his circle. I’ve always just seen it as part of who he is. You know? Helping out. Making sure the people he works with are supported. Now? I just don’t know. Can someone like that even feel for others? Maybe he was getting them into a position where he could use them.”

Riggs. Could Eliot Spencer be manipulating Riggs so he can make use of the detective? Riggs isn’t normally someone anyone can manipulate with any confidence he’ll do what they want. Trying to manipulate Riggs is more likely to get a random explosive reaction than anything else. Or a literal explosion. 

Cahill bites her lip and rises to pick up her notes. When she sits down again she finds Carter watching her, looking concerned.

“What is it?” Carter asks. “Have I said something wrong?”

“No,” Cahill says. “It’s just… I’ve interviewed Spencer today, and he’s not easy to read. A lot of what’s in his files doesn’t fit what I’m seeing, but he’s undeniably dangerous. And the PTSD I picked up when I interviewed him as Ellis seems to have gone, but I don’t know whether he was putting it on before or is hiding it now.”

Carter grimaces.

“He displayed symptoms,” she says. “They never got in the way of his work, but they were there. I’d say they were genuine, except maybe everything I ever saw was a lie. A carefully crafted lie designed to take us all in. I just can’t work out why. Why would he spend so many years hiding among us? Those files, they say he hurt children. That he killed children. But I’ve only ever seen him be kind to children. Protective of them. He’s put himself in danger more than once to help a child.”

“You doubt what’s in the files?” Cahill asks. 

Riggs seems to, Spencer won’t deny them but isn’t acting as though he’s been discovered, and now Carter is having such trouble seeing her friend and colleague in the pages that it seems odd. Even the best trained operative surely couldn’t fool a psychiatrist for years.

“I want to,” Carter says, and this time the smile looks even more painful. “Anyway, I should be going. Thank you for your time, Doctor Cahill. Perhaps we can speak again.”

Cahill agrees. There’s something warm and fragile about this woman, and she doesn’t like to think of a colleague hurting the way Carter so clearly is. If Cahill can help her through this, she will.

Once Carter is gone, Cahill thinks seriously about going home, but she finds her discomfort over the files has grown. Something about what she’s being told just doesn’t add up, and that’s without Riggs acting like Spencer is his new best friend who’s been wrongfully accused of fighting in the playground. 

She does leave, because she knows if she doesn’t get some sleep she’ll be good for nothing the next day, but she takes the files with her. Reading through them one more time might help, and if nothing else she can try to work out what to make of Riggs in that hospital room, because if everything about Spencer is true then she might need to speak to Avery about keeping Riggs away from him. 

She very much doesn’t want to be in Carter’s position, hearing a colleague has done something beyond the line, and she has a niggling feeling that leaving Riggs in Spencer’s company for too long might lead to just that outcome. Still, she’ll sleep on it. She can go to Avery in the morning, when she’s had chance to consider it again. Nothing can happen overnight, with Spencer cuffed and under guard. 

Even Riggs won’t try to break the guy out of that.


	51. Chapter 51

Time passes slowly in the silence. The hospital is quieter at night, even though Riggs can hear activity in the distance. It’s muffled, though. Everything seems muffled, including the inside of Riggs’ head. Maybe it’s coming down from the adrenaline, or maybe it’s some form of shock. Hell if he knows. Could be a load of things. Cahill’s tried to talk to him about the numbing effect of grief and depression, but he hasn’t wanted to listen.

Right now, he feels encased in whatever this bubble is he’s got stuck in with Eliot, waiting to work out what he believes. 

A doctor stops by to read Eliot’s charts and try to talk to the guy, but he gets no response. Riggs shares a look with the doctor and exchanges a couple of words, but that’s it. The doctor acts like Riggs really is there to stop Eliot from getting away. Maybe he is. 

Later, a nurse calls in to check the fluids and stare at the beeping machines and whatever it is nurses do. Eliot opens his eyes just enough for a glimmer of their color to show, but he doesn’t give any other sign he’s awake and Riggs starts to wonder if he imagined it. There could be a lot he’s been imagining about Eliot Spencer.

The night wears on, with no sign of Eliot’s team and no sign of anyone else coming by, and it’s easy to slip into a semi-doze. Riggs is leaning back in the chair with his booted feet up on the edge of the bed when Eliot speaks again. It’s a sudden break in the silence and it jolts him, just enough he has to fight for balance. 

“You really don’t think I killed all those people?” Eliot asks. 

The legs of the chair clatter on the tiled floor as Riggs catches himself, folding his arms over his chest once he’s stable and staring at the guy in the bed. There’s no sign Eliot’s awake, except for the fact he’s spoken. The monitors have been saying his state’s unchanged for the last couple of hours, but the steady breathing and the lack of movement were enough to lull Riggs into a sense that nothing was going to happen.

“I told you, I’m not sure what to think,” Riggs says. 

“Gonna need more of an answer than that,” Eliot says, as though he’s interviewing Riggs for some role. 

Riggs shrugs. Eliot can’t see it, not with his eyes closed and his face turned to the ceiling, but it makes Riggs feel like this is less of a surreal conversation with someone in a coma or something.

“Sure. Fine. I don’t buy you did those things in the files. Not all of them.”

“Because you have such a fine grasp of what makes me tick, having known me for all of a few days,” Eliot says. 

Riggs pushes himself upright, setting his boots on the floor and pulling the chair close enough that he can lean his chin on the railing around Eliot’s bed. 

“Why’ve you got to keep pushing this?” he asks. “Do you want me to believe you’re a big, bad assassin? That it? This some kind of penance thing for what you did in war? Because I’ve been there, and thinking of yourself as a monster isn’t going to help.”

“I ain’t thinking of myself as a monster,” Eliot says, and shifts, moving his shoulders and his hips enough it’s clear he’s uncomfortable. His eyes don’t open. “Man, I’ve seen your file, and I ain’t saying you had it easy, but you didn’t do the things I did. Got pushed into some corners, thought I had to… Well, it ain’t important. But it’s not that I’m thinking of myself as a monster: it’s that I know I did things, up toward the end there, and after it, that make that kind of distinction pointless. And I meant it when I said I don’t know what’s in those files, but if this is the end for me, I don’t see it doing any good you coming down with me.”

“You think sitting by this bed is going to end my glittering career?” Riggs asks. “El, it’s not like I’ve got much of a career in the first place. And they can’t send me away for sitting here, no matter what you might have done.”

Eliot swallows. This time, Riggs is almost sure it’s a natural reaction. It’s starting to get creepy, the way they’re having this conversation with Eliot refusing to open his eyes. Must be weird, talking to someone you barely know about war-crimes and assassinations and torture, when you’re basically lying in the dark. Riggs has been accused of being unbalanced by more than one person, and a few days ago Eliot seemed balanced enough he wouldn’t fall down no matter how hard someone pushed, but Riggs just gets a glimpse here…

“You’re saying you did at least some of it, or some of what you think is in there,” Riggs says, feeling his way along what Eliot isn’t saying. “What, exactly?” 

This time, Eliot does open his eyes and look at Riggs. The storminess is still there, but it isn’t directed outward anymore. Riggs isn’t entirely sure Eliot’s really in the room with him.

“I killed them,” Eliot says.

It feels a little like trying to diffuse a bomb, like that moment of uncertainty where the explosion could be stopped in its tracks or where it could roar to life, hurling destruction around it. Riggs almost doesn’t want to ask. Almost.

“Killed who?”

“A whole load of people,” Eliot says. “Maybe not the ones in those files. I don’t know. Doubt there’s any agency in the world knows everyone I killed. But that don’t matter. They were still people. I still killed them.”

“Combat can force you-“ Riggs starts.

Eliot cuts him off with a growl.

“No. Not in war. Not just in war. And some of what I did… Listen, even in war, there are some lines you ain’t meant to cross. I get that now. But then? Then, I saw brothers needing protecting, and…”

He stops, swallows again. Riggs isn’t sure what’s set Eliot off, because when Cahill was in the room he could have sworn Eliot would resist any attempts to speak about this honestly. The thought occurs to him that Eliot might still be lying, that the guy might still be crafting a narrative for Riggs’ benefit. He just can’t see why.

Eliot speaks more quietly when he goes on, in a hushed tone as though he can’t say it any louder without breaking something. Maybe himself.

“If anyone knew some of what I did then, orders or not, I’d be locked in a cell so deep I’d never see sunlight again. And I’ve been in some cells like that, some of them I’ve been sent into by men in uniforms, and it gets real hard to see what side is just or if any is.”

“And that’s why you went into the other work?” Riggs asks, because those pages of information about assassinations, about murders and brutal killings and torture, are what he really can’t see.

Doing something, even something truly awful and unforgivable, out in the kind of situations that can happen in war-zones… that he can see. But the rest? Riggs was a mess after, and pouring himself in to loving Miranda gave him a way of shoving it aside, for better or for worse, but the job helped too. He had a way to help, and a way to not feel so restless inside his own skin, no matter how many warnings he got from his bosses. Even now, the job keeps him from climbing into the bottle and bar fights and never coming back out. He never tipped over into wet work.

“I was already dirty,” Eliot says. He sounds more drugged, in a way, than he did back when Riggs and Parker pulled him from that chair. Distant. “Easier to get dirtier than to try getting clean.”

“What did you do?” Riggs asks. He’s still a cop, and his instinct, when a suspect starts talking, is to keep them talking, to see what they reveal. He doesn’t always want so badly for them to reveal nothing.

“I fell nearly all the way down,” Eliot says. “Details ain’t important.”

They are. Of course they are. But Eliot seems to be reading from some script he’s got in his head, his eyes scanning back and forth and not really landing properly on Riggs anymore.

Like he’s drugged.

Riggs frowns and sits up.

“Hey, El?” he asks. You feeling okay? Not fuzzy in the head again or anything?”

Eliot doesn’t react at first. Slowly, his face creases and he blinks. He still doesn’t meet Riggs’ eyes, but it looks like he might be trying to. 

“What?” he asks. The word is noticeably more slurred than the guy was a few minutes ago. 

“Fuzzy,” Riggs says. “Sick. Dizzy.” He stands as he talks, tracing the wires and tubes connected to Eliot as he goes. “This anything like the way you were feeling back in that chair?”

“You think I’ve been drugged again,” Eliot says. He sounds more puzzled than angry, and that is not a sign that everything is all right, here. “Like in that chair.”

And now his words are too slow. Riggs takes a moment to rest a hand on Eliot’s forehead, telling himself not to worry when the guy doesn’t flinch or glare or snap. The skin is clammy, like back in that room. 

“I think you’ve been drugged,” he says. “Can’t figure our how, though.”

“Nah,” Eliot says, the edges of his lips curling up as he rolls his head away from Riggs’ hand. “I’d know. It’s a very dis-”

“No-one’s come in since I got here,” Riggs says. “Except…”

Except there’s been a nurse, who’d come in to check readings and adjust the fluids. 

“You notice anything about that nurse?” Riggs asks.

“He had nice arms,” Eliot says, or possibly says, because it’s hard to make it out by now. 

“Yeah. Nice arms. Sure,” Riggs says. “I meant anything that might say he wasn’t a nurse.”

“No,” Eliot says. He tries to lift his hand and grimaces when the restraints stop him. “He… Muscles.”

“Okay, I heard you,” Riggs says. “He had him some nice, muscular arms. Whatever you’re into, man.”

He registers what Eliot’s trying to say a fraction of a second later. 

“You think he wasn’t a nurse?”

It’s not like nurses don’t do a tough job, but Eliot already struck Riggs as perceptive and the comments made by his team, by his family, only emphasized that. Eliot isn’t admiring a random nurse. 

“Someone’s drugged you right in front of me,” Riggs says, dismayed. “Shit. But who-?”

“CIA,” Eliot says. “Shoulda…shoulda seen it. I don’t… They…”

He makes another attempt to lift himself from the bed and groans when he can’t, pulling at the cuffs in something that looks partway between confusion and desperation. 

“You think the CIA planted those files and now they’re drugging you? Why?”

Eliot just admitted to Riggs he killed people. Whatever they’ve pumped him full of… But truth serums don’t work that way. They don’t make people tell the truth. They just make it harder to keep in mind you shouldn’t be. So Eliot must have wanted, on some level, to tell Riggs. The thought Eliot’s having the decision more or less taken away from him makes Riggs angry. 

“I’ll call Avery,” he says. “Hell, I’ll call Trish. She’s a lawyer. She’ll-”

But Eliot shakes his head and tugs on he restraints. Again.

“No. They’re coming. They’re coming for me.”

“Now? But they got you arrested. Why’d they need to drug you?”

Riggs has no idea why that makes Eliot laugh, but once he’s calm enough to speak the guy drawls out a few more words.

“Because they’re scared of me. I beat them once and I scared them so bad…”

He says that like he took on the entire CIA and won, and Riggs isn’t sure what it says that he’s ready to believe that. He realizes he believes something else, too: Eliot confessed, more or less, and how much is more and how much is less is up in the air, but the guy is a killer. He’s said so. And hearing that the CIA is coming after him solidifies Riggs’ stance on whether he’s on Eliot’s side. 

He may well be going to Hell when he dies at this rate. He hopes Miranda will find a way to visit.

Moving before he can think twice and risk talking himself out of it, Riggs leans over the bed and undoes the cuff on Eliot’s right ankle. When the guy tries to speak, Riggs hushes him.

“No. Stay quiet. I don’t know where your team are, but I can’t believe they’ll leave you to this.”

“No. They won’t,” Eliot says, and Riggs doesn’t have time to wonder about the odd note in Eliot’s voice. 

“But maybe they don’t know about this, and we don’t have time to wait for them. So, come on,” Riggs says.

He has the ankles done and moves on to Eliot’s wrists. As soon as they’re free, Eliot pulls his arms away and tries to roll off the bed. Riggs has to grab him, has to steady him and make him wait until the bar at the side is down. Even Eliot can’t roll through a metal bar. After that, he helps Eliot to remove the wires and the feed for the drip, wincing a little himself at the way Eliot doesn’t react to any of it. He’s not sure how much of that is the drugs and how much is stoic familiarity with such things.

“You well enough to move?” Riggs thinks to ask, as he holds Eliot up, the guy’s bare feet doing nothing to make him seem ready for this. 

Eliot snorts. It’s barely any sharper than his words have become, but Riggs gets the meaning. Eliot’s version of ready is different to most people’s. Despite everything, Riggs feels the adrenaline, the excitement starting up. He didn’t get a chance to see Eliot fight before, but he’s had a few hours and fluids and the previous drugs are gone. Whatever he’s been given now, he isn’t reacting quite the same as before. It’s making him loopy, but it isn’t knocking him out.

They find clothing stored in the cabinet and Riggs helps Eliot into it, ignoring the fact that involves seeing Eliot strip right down. He ignores the shakiness of Eliot’s limbs, as well. He has to trust they’ll make it out of here. He has to believe in Eliot. He’s committed. 

“Okay,” Riggs says. “Let’s get you out of here. If you’re family aren’t at their bar, we’ll find somewhere to lay low.”

Eliot nods, and it’s almost like being back on a mission. For the first time in a long time, Riggs has a fellow soldier by his side as he moves out.


	52. Chapter 52

The rib still burns with pain, but it’s a banked fire now and not the blaze it was. Whatever drug he was given back in that room, it made everything hurt worse. Now, after rest and fluids and time to regroup, Eliot still hurts. He’s still trembling. He’s absolutely still in need of several days of real rest. 

Thing is, he’s never been able to rest as well as he should do in a hospital. They’re too public, too easy to reach someone in. 

Case in point, his vision isn’t quite right. The images feel like they’re arriving in his brain a part-second later than they should be, like he’s watching his own life on a screen with a delay in the transmission. It doesn’t make for the precision he needs to be sure of doing this quietly, or with minimal harm.

He knows it’s not really a tech issue, that it’s his synapses or his brain chemistry or whatever, but he can’t shake the idea it’d be better, easier, if Hardison were here. Or Parker, even though all she’d do would be taser anyone who got in Eliot’s way.

Still, they’re not here, and Riggs is. 

Eliot can take the lead on this kind of thing, easily, but he can follow someone else’s lead, too. It was always a skill his superiors appreciated. Right now, Eliot is with a Navy Seal, and one who’s already shown he’s invested in Eliot getting out. Riggs hasn’t been drinking the whole time he’s been in Eliot’s room, as far as Eliot can tell. No scent of it, assuming Eliot’s sense of smell hasn’t been fucked with as well. At any rate, it makes sense for Riggs to take the lead.

He isn’t expecting the guy to take them to the busiest juncture on the way out. 

Eliot grabs Riggs’ arm, pulling him to a stop and into a curve in the hallway. They’ll be out of sight of the guys waiting up ahead, for a while.

“What are you planning?” he asks. For a moment, the thought that Riggs might be taking him right to the CIA goons flashes across Eliot’s mind, but he pushes it aside. Riggs has no reason to do that: Eliot was already strapped to that bed, and already telling Riggs things he shouldn’t have been. If Riggs had been planted in Eliot’s way as some kind of confidence trick it had already worked. He found himself not caring that he was telling Riggs things he doesn’t tell anyone, not even Hardison and Parker. Not even Nate knows what Eliot has really done. The drug, or the drug combined with what he’s been through the last few days, has shaken something loose in him. Doesn’t mean Eliot’s going to just go along with running at the people trying to take him down. “We go up there, we have to fight them. You think they’re just going to let me by?”

Riggs looks genuinely confused.

“How else are we getting out?” he asks. “The outside’s that way.”

“There’s more than one way out,” Eliot hisses, and, yeah, maybe spending so many years with Parker has made him see exits where most people would see a wall, but the bigger problem here is that Riggs is not a criminal. He’s a cop. He’s a cop who goes so far over the line he can barely see the line with a telescope, but he’s still a cop. Not exactly used to subterfuge and sneaking on the Leverage level, is what Eliot is thinking. “I gotta fight the whole dame lot of them, I will. But I’m not at the top of my game, here, and those guys up there? Are trained. I’ll take getting out clean before I go looking for a fight.”

“You think there won’t be a way out they’ve got covered?” Riggs asks. “Come on, man. The way out is through.”

Eliot glances away, searching for the best route even with his fuzzy head, and when he looks back he sees a gap in the world where Riggs should be. Spinning, and throwing out a hand to steady himself against the wall at what that does to his head, Eliot sees Riggs striding straight at the three men who are clearly CIA, men who are already turning and assessing Riggs. Men who are armed.

“Fuck.”

Eliot pushes himself away from the wall and ghosts along the hallway, using the little cover provided and making sure his body language doesn’t draw attention. He needs to be close enough to back Riggs if it’s needed, but he isn’t getting out in the open if he doesn’t have to. He had his reasons for getting Riggs involved, and not all of them were about the con, but he isn’t going to die because the man is a loose canon. 

Eliot’s deadly, not stupid.

“Hey, guys!” Riggs calls out as he approaches the men, and Eliot sees the faint ripple of surprise that runs through them. Riggs throws his arms out, almost like he’s planning on going in for a hug, and if nothing else it does distract them. “You must be getting tired out here. You sure you don’t want anything? I’m going on a beer run. Anyone?” Riggs points at the man on the right, a hulking fellow who seems to have more shoulders than is physically possible. “You? Beer? Or something stronger.” Riggs shrugs. “I might be able to go as far as vodka, but you want anything really pricey and you’ll have to chip in. I’m not made of money.”

Riggs moves to the right as he talks, over to the side of the corridor opposite Eliot, and it pulls the men away from the left wall, just a bit…

Years with Parker have taught Eliot that a wall can be a door, and any gap can be used. Years working at war and at killing, no matter what it was being called at the time, have taught him to be decisive. Eliot moves.

Riggs’ voice, raised in increasingly bizarre offers to the CIA goons, follows Eliot down the hallway as he makes it past them and round the corner. He slips into an empty room and waits, leaning with his back against the wall. He’d head out, but there’ll be other blocks and he already feels his energy draining. 

He only has to wait a few minutes before he hears Riggs outside, that distinctive gait of his easy to spot. Eliot’s never understood how so many people fail to hear the difference in how people walk. Parker comes the closest, he thinks, to getting how he feels there. There are many things she can do that other people can’t.

Riggs doesn’t yelp when Eliot darts out and drags him into the room, but he does make a choked out noise that might have been on its way to being a yelp.

“What are you doing?” Riggs asks when he’s facing Eliot. “You should have kept going. You could be halfway out by now.”

“No,” Eliot says. “We stick together.”

“They aren’t after me,” Riggs says, leaning in closer than most people would be comfortable with.

Eliot still isn’t sure what exactly it is he does with his eyes that scares people so much, but he accepts it must be something, because mostly people back away when he feels certain ways. Riggs doesn’t. 

“They will be,” Eliot says. “They find out you were in the room with me when I got away? They’ll be after you. Good thing you don’t have-”

He cuts off, but not before Riggs pulls back. Eliot’s expression in a fight and flight situation doesn’t worry the guy, but the half-spoken statement that Riggs has no-one the CIA can go after? Yeah, that’ll do it. Eliot grimaces, but the drug is still making his head spin and the words he normally keeps trapped safely behind his teeth want to spill out. 

“I’m sorry-” he says.

Riggs shakes his head, turning and smoothing his hand over his hair, even though it’s not out of order.

“Don’t,” he says. “We don’t talk about that.”

Eliot wants the words back, because he thought Riggs might trust him, and now he isn’t so sure, but this isn’t the time for worrying about that. This is the time for getting them both out, because Riggs has been in war zones, and he’s been in situations with criminals of all kinds that would freak most people out to the point of death, but he hasn’t been hunted by a government agency. Eliot has. More than once. 

“We stick together,” he says, when he’s got his words under control enough to speak without saying something else to hurt Riggs. “You understand?”

Riggs might not get the significance of the phrase, but Eliot does, and he means it. Riggs was a solider, and in Eliot’s book that makes him a soldier still, and there’ll always be that part of Eliot that looks at a solider and sees a brother. He isn’t going to get into it, is pretty sure that Riggs wouldn’t want to hear it, and is even more certain that Riggs already knows. There’s got to be a reason the guy’s been sitting by Eliot’s bed all night.

“Fine,” Riggs says, like Eliot’s asking him to do something annoying and trivial, such as washing the dishes. “But no more hiding in random rooms. You want to play hide and seek so bad, we can do that later. Rog can join in. He’ll love it.”

Riggs turns, but Eliot hears movement in the hallway and grabs Riggs’ arm again. 

“What-?” Riggs starts.

“They’re outside,” Eliot says, and sinks back into the deeper shadows in the room, drawing Riggs with him.

“The guys from the hallway?” Riggs asks, lowering his voice, but not moving as far as Eliot wants him to. 

His actions do smooth out, become more purposeful, and Eliot can see the Navy Seal in him. He also sees the way Riggs reaches for his gun. Eliot shifts his grip to Riggs’ forearm.

“No guns.”

“What?” Riggs sounds shocked. “No guns? El, guns are what I do.”

“They’re not what I do,” Eliot says. 

Riggs stares at him for a longer moment than is comfortable, what with the CIA outside the door, moving back and forth, opening doors to rooms nearby. 

“I’m not going to shoot anyone if I don’t have to,” Riggs tells him. 

But Eliot has the feeling Riggs’ version of ‘have to’ is a lot different from his. His fingers flex on Riggs’ skin, and he lets go. He can’t control Riggs. All he can do is control himself, and that’s going to be hard enough with the drugs still making him dizzy. 

“No killing,” Eliot says. He says it the way he used to give orders, back in the day, and sees the answering light in Riggs’ eyes. No telling if it’s acceptance or resistance, not with everything spinning inside his skull.

There isn’t time for more before the door opens and two guys appear. They clearly don’t have a problem with guns. 

Riggs is between Eliot and the door, shielding him, and it buys them a few seconds. Clear-headed, Eliot wouldn’t need those seconds, but now they could make all the difference.

As Riggs turns, expressing surprise at being interrupted, Eliot readies himself to lunge. He’ll take out the larger guy first. Not the one with the shoulders: he must be searching another room. This one is still more than big enough, though, and trained in at least three martial arts. He has to be put-

“A guy can’t get a little alone time with his boyfriend around here?” Riggs demands, and Eliot’s calculations stutter to a halt. “Come on, man. That’s just mean.”

“You were guarding the prisoner,” the shorter guy says. He needs taking down too, but the way he carries himself says he’s the less experienced, the less sure of himself. The one more likely to do something out of panic or bravado, too. “You expect us to believe you left to meet a boyfriend?”

“A?” Riggs asks, taking a half step sideways so Eliot’s even further behind him. “You saying I have more than one? What kind of man do you think I am? He struggles to trust in a relationship as it is, without you putting ideas in his head. I do not need a repeat of last Thanksgiving. Hours of crying and shouting and, well, the make-up sex was pretty good, but we will not be invited back to my mom’s for this year, I can tell you.”

The guys look just uncertain enough that Eliot thinks they might be going to buy it, but the taller one’s expression changes and he straightens, tapping one hand to an ear. Right. Someone will just have checked Eliot’s room.

“Care to show us your boyfriend,” the taller one says. 

Eliot sets himself to do what’s needed and moves sideways, into the light. He tilts his head to the side and puts his hands out, smirking. Surprise is done with now, but confusion works.

“You going to criticize our love?” he asks, and sees the flicker of puzzlement in the taller one’s eyes.

It hasn’t cleared yet by the time Eliot’s fist knocks him out, and Riggs punches the smaller guy hard enough to knock him back only a fraction of a second later. Eliot moves in, putting that one out of the fight before Riggs can decide a gun works better, and has to let Riggs get hold of him again. It’s that or wind up on the floor.

“Boyfriend?” he says. Gasps, really, which doesn’t help. He’s literally panting in Riggs’ arms just now, and Hardison would find this far too hilarious. Hardison can never know. 

“You saying you wouldn’t date me?” Riggs says, grinning in that slanting way he has. It might fool some people. “I’m hurt, El. Truly hurt.

Eliot manages to get his breath under control enough to snort.

“Take a bath and we’ll talk,” he mutters.

This time, it’s Riggs who looks surprised, then pleased, and Eliot isn’t going to let himself think about that. The plan was never for Riggs to develop some crush on Eliot.

More footsteps outside tell him they aren’t out of this yet, and he closes his eyes briefly and leans into Riggs. He needs more time to be ready, but time is something he hardly ever gets. Instead, he lets his body go softer, lets his hair fall partly over his face, and pretends to be on the point of collapse. 

This time, when men appear in the doorway, they see Riggs gripping onto a man who is far from a threat. They get close enough to find out they’re wrong in that assumption. Eliot stays one step ahead of the CIA and half a step ahead of Riggs deciding to use his gun, but he does it. 

He doesn’t want to think about how many people will be between them and the exit, especially when he doesn’t have Parker or Hardison to ease the way, but he can’t let it stop him. One barrier at a time. Work the problem. 

When the last body falls - still breathing, Eliot’s almost sure - they move. They make it almost all the way out before Riggs has to fire his gun.


	53. Chapter 53

Eliot fights like he’s got some demon trying to claw its way out of him, but it’s a demon he has on a leash. He’s fierce and he’s brutal and he’s…controlled. Riggs is no stranger to that odd mix of control and wildness, but Eliot has it at a new level. And he can see why some people might believe what they read about the guy, because seeing the look in Eliot’s eyes as he chokes out someone half again his height, or strikes with no hesitation before most people would even have noticed the threat, makes it all too easy to place the man in the role of demon himself. Something close to it, anyway. 

If Eliot’s made any deals with a demon, though, he’s the one in charge, and if he is a demon, he’s got himself under his own command. He always stops short of killing, even when killing would be quicker, easier, and more certain. He won’t let Riggs risk it, either, and whatever his deal is with guns, he really means it. Three times, Riggs thinks he’ll have to shoot someone, and Eliot gets in there first, drugged and dizzy and injured as he is, and takes the guy out before Riggs has to. 

They’re almost out when Eliot’s no gun strategy falls apart. 

The pile of people they’ve left behind them is impressive, even considering the way Riggs tends to lead his life, and the fact that Eliot’s still functioning is cause for a drink, but even Eliot can be overwhelmed by numbers and firepower, and a gun aimed right at the guy’s head, from too great a distance to be disarmed, brings him to a halt. At the barked instructions from the CIA guy, one of five in the hallway they’ve ended up in, Eliot lifts his hands slowly. There’s a compressed energy about him still, like he doesn’t see this as the endpoint, and Riggs almost wants to leave it alone, to see how it’ll play out. Almost.

But now three of the men have guns aimed at Eliot. The door to the outside is just at the other end of the hallway, and Eliot can’t get to it because three people have guns aimed at his head. Even from the distances involved, it’s more than possible to miss, but all three… 

Not one of them points a gun at Riggs. It’s insulting, is what it is. And stupid.

“Come on, fellas,” he says, his hand twitching on his gun, which is still in his belt. Eliot insisted. “Is this any way to treat an injured man?”

“Commander Spencer is coming with us,” says the one directly in between them and the way out. 

“Back to that bed?” Eliot asks. If Riggs didn’t know Eliot was drugged, he wouldn’t be able to tell from the rough disgust in the tone. “To those cuffs? Not gonna happen, bubba.”

Commander. Huh. That’s unlikely to have anything to do with how still he’s standing, or with how he isn’t backing down at all from the threat. He’s still the way a snake is before it strikes. The men with the guns look a lot less settled, and Riggs has seen that edge to people before. No way can he trust them to stick with not firing. 

“You gotta know we’re walking out of here,” Riggs says, and he isn’t even sure he’s meaning to smile, but by this point it’s automatic. “Why not let us by? Give yourselves a break.”

“You’re ending your career, helping him,” the one closest to Riggs says. “Stop now and you might not end up rotting in a cell.”

Riggs pretends to consider, shifting so he’s got a better line of sight. Eliot’s eyes don’t flicker over to him, but the set of his back and shoulders say he’s more than aware of what Riggs is doing, of what he might be about to do. 

“If I do, will you forget you ever saw me?” he asks. 

“Stop playing games, Detective,” the guy in charge says. “You can’t win here.”

The one on the right, one of the three holding the guns on Eliot, is less steady than the others. If anyone is going to fire, it’ll be him. He looks far too on edge for this. Riggs wonders if he’s just green or if it’s going up against Eliot that’s throwing him. Even if these men haven’t seen anything of the files, just the level of response to Eliot has to be making them think. 

“Now, don’t be writing us off just yet,” Riggs says. “If I were a betting man, I would not be giving us bad odds.”

The man almost visibly erases Riggs from what’s relevant, and if he didn’t deserve his ass handing to him before, he does now. Instead, the man speaks to Eliot.

“You going to let this guy die for you?” he asks. “Because that’s what it’ll come to. Do you really need more blood on your hands?”

Riggs can only see Eliot’s profile, but he sees the edge of the smile, and there is no warmth or humor in it at all. The nervous guy tightens his grip on the trigger, far too close to firing, but if Eliot notices he doesn’t make a move to do anything about it. 

“You got no idea how much blood, or who’s, so don’t go pretending,” Eliot says. “If I add any more today, it won’t be his.”

“You either come with us or we make sure you don’t go anywhere,” the one in charge says. “You know how this works.”

Riggs doesn’t hate guns. He does hate seeing people die, hates seeing good men shot and killed, and he’s been in enough situations where it’s happened to know that isn’t an idle threat. These guys might well miss from where they are, even with training, because most people do. Accuracy is a lot harder than it seems. They also might not.

Riggs doesn’t miss. Not from double the distance. Not from triple. 

As the first one falls, Eliot explodes into movement, spinning and dropping as the other two men fire. Both bullets miss. Riggs thinks. He’s almost sure they do. 

In any case, Eliot turns the move into a sweep, flooring one man and leaving him still on the floor. Riggs doesn’t quite see how he does it, but by the time he’s hit the first guy in the leg, taking him out of the equation, Eliot has three of the others out cold. He’s squaring up against the last one, and Riggs can see strain on Eliot’s face. 

He also sees the way clear to the outside. 

“Come on!” he shouts, turning his gun on that last man. “We’ve gotta go now!”

What they’ll do once they’re out is another matter entirely, but they’ll think of something. Between them, they’re crazy enough and skilled enough to come up with something.

Eliot growls, and lunges, and grunts.

Riggs gets to him in time to stop him collapsing, and every one of their opponents is out. Thing is, Eliot’s clammy, his eyes too glassy, and there’s no telling right now, when they need to move, if it’s the drugs or the earlier injuries or something new. 

Riggs thinks those bullets missed.

“Come on!” he says again, and this time he tugs Eliot along.

Eliot moves.


	54. Chapter 54

Nate watches as Quinn shrugs on the jacket, the look on his face less than happy. Sophie has done an excellent job with the make-up and hair, and the fake mustache really doesn’t look fake at all. Well, no more than Riggs’ actual mustache does.

“And you’re sure I’m not going to run into the real thing?” Quinn asks, turning to peer into the mirror Sophie’s set up in the middle of the room. He brushes his hair back and grimaces. The hair is as close as they’ve been able to manage. “This guy does not deserve my face, not with this fashion sense.”

As Quinn has a habit of wearing badly fitting suits to jobs where Eliot would wear combat gear, Nate doesn’t bother to reply to that. He’s still not sure why the team have worked with this guy so much since Sophie and he went off to try retirement, but Quinn has his uses. 

“Riggs is at the hospital, from what Doctor Cahill told Sophie,” Nate says. He crosses to the window and looks out, checking again that no-one has tailed them to this apartment. Hardison has several dotted around the country, but even Nate didn’t know he has more than one in LA. “Anyone who sees you will assume you’re him and you’ve just wandered away from the room.”

“By ‘anyone’, you mean LAPD and the CIA, right?” Quinn asks. “And am I allowed to hit all of them?”

“No,” Nate says. Managing Quinn isn’t quite like managing Eliot. There are similarities, but Eliot has always had an empathy to him and a drive to do right by people that Quinn seems to lack. He’s also more compliant as long as the orders don’t get in the way of him receiving his pay. “You walk in, you get to Eliot, you work out what’s happening. If you see an opening, you get him out. But remember, he needs that medical care, so I want him in that bed until we have to move him, if we can make that work.”

“Which we might have to,” Hardison says. “Listen, Nate, the CIA already has Eliot, all right? They are all over that hospital. I can’t get access to half of the stuff I need in there, and they have pretty much everything run through so many ciphers it’s like the Riddler got involved, but from what I can make out the big boss is expected real soon.”

“Eliot’s injured-” Nate starts.

Parker hisses. Nate stops and stares at her where she’s perched on the back of the armchair in the corner, running a thing rope through her hands over and over and over again. 

“You think we should get him out now,” Nate says, and it has occurred to him. He just isn’t sure, from the few details Hardison has been able to access, that Eliot will do well without medical care. 

“He can heal with us,” Parker says. “He’s done it before.”

Nate isn’t counting on Parker and Hardison following his lead, not if they think Eliot is better served another way. He hasn’t been trying to take over, remembering Sophie’s caution on the way here that he walked away, that they both walked away, and how it might be taken if he stepped back in to his old role as though that hadn’t been the case. She also told him the old certainty might calm Parker, and Hardison, and that she’s keep an eye on it, and so far she hasn’t told Nate to back down. 

“I can get what he needs,” Hardison says quietly. “What I don’t already have stashed in a warehouse.”

“You keep a warehouse stocked with medical supplies?” Sophie asks. 

“We keep a warehouse stocked with Eliot supplies,” Parker says. “Every city we have a place.”

Nate doesn’t ask how often they’ve had to use it. Parker cares for Eliot, very much, but in some ways she lets him take bigger risks than Nate used to. Nate’s had reason to wonder how Eliot feels about death, but it’s on the list of things they’ve never discussed. Parker just seems to think he’s immune to it.

Of course, the real reason he let the LAPD take Eliot was so they could flush out whoever was after him, and Nate is sure Parker at least understands that. 

“Might be an idea to get some of those supplies over here,” Quinn says. “From the state he was in when I left him, he’ll need them.”

Quinn has already used most of what Hardison had in the other apartment, but he looks fine now. The stiffness and bruising are something the guy knows how to ignore, of course, but Nate is pleased to see the drug has had no lasting effects. It suggests Eliot should be clear-headed by now and able to move. He means what he said about Eliot staying under the care of actual doctors if possible, but he’s well aware the chances of being able to leave it like that are slim. The information about Conrad has changed the game.

Hardison nods, but doesn’t answer Quinn. Chances are good he’s already taken care of it. 

“Once you’re in, use Hardison’ device to let us see into the room,” Nate says. Eliot wouldn’t need reminding, but Nate isn’t taking the risk with Quinn. 

“And the other one needs placing so we can access their whole system. I get it,” Quinn says, who apparently feels he doesn’t need reminding. “Let’s get this over with. I want out of this…this outfit.”

“But you’re fine with the mustache?” Hardison asks, glancing up from where he’s packing the devices Quinn needs into a slim case. 

Quinn shrugs. 

“It grows on you,” he says, and smirks. “Now, how about I go get our boy?”

Nate waits until Quinn is gone before he turns to Sophie, who’s been sitting quietly in the other armchair, a folder open on her lap. 

“He cares about Eliot, too,” she says, without looking up. 

“He has a crush on Eliot the size of Canada,” Hardison says. There’s that edge to everything he’s said since he worked out who was after Eliot, the one that says he isn’t happy and that he’s trusting Nate only because of their history and not because this makes sense. “Like it’s gonna get him anywhere.”

“Does Eliot know?” Nate asks. 

Parker grunts. When Nate looks her way she shrugs.

“He tells us to shut up when we ask,” she says. “Hardison thinks that means he isn’t sure what to do about it.”

“Means he’s more invested in getting Eliot back,” Hardison says.

“And you’re sure Detective Riggs is invested in Eliot’s well-being?” Nate asks Sophie, because considering Quinn hanging around Eliot like a love-struck teenager is a bit too much to process just now. “We might still need to involve him-”

“He’s invested,” Sophie says. She taps the page she’s on and Nate wonders if Cahill will realize how much Sophie walked away with at any point. “Like I said, he feels a connection to Eliot. Not the first time he’s connected with an ex-soldier, but Cahill doesn’t know who Eliot really is. As far as she knows, Riggs is relating to a man who’s… Well. It’s worrying to Dr Cahill. Then again, she seems worried about Riggs in general.”

There’s something in the way Sophie says that. Nate sees Hardison look up with a faint frown, as well.

“You don’t seem real happy about it yourself,” Hardison says. 

Sophie shakes her head, but she doesn’t look up. She does recross her ankles. 

“I had to pretend to be shocked,” she says. “To be scared of the man I now know Eliot to be.”

“Of the man your alias knows Eliot to be,” Nate corrects her, and sees her grimace. “Sophie? Are you feeling shocked or scared about what’s in those files?”

“They’re false,” Hardison says. “Come on. That ain’t Eliot in those files. Not our Eliot.”

“Our Eliot isn’t like that anymore,” Parker says. 

And that’s the point, Nate supposes. What’s in those files isn’t all lies. He doesn’t know how much is, but he knows at least some of it, whether Eliot’s exact actions or not, follows the same script. He did his research, back when he was chasing Eliot for his retrieval work and before they first worked together, and he knows a few things from Eliot himself. When the hitter thought Nate really needed to know something, he told him. Sometimes. After the incident with Moreau, anyway, and after the long talk they had about it as they waited for the paperwork to get them into San Lorenzo. That doesn’t mean Nate thinks he knows it all. He’s never wanted to know it all. He’s never told the others what Eliot did in that warehouse, either, how he can still slip into who he used to be when he needs to. 

“Our Eliot was never the way it says in those files,” Hardison says. “Not…not all of that.”

But he sounds troubled. 

They fall into silence, Sophie still reading the files, Hardison working on trying to find a way to get the information they need, and Parker and Nate just waiting. There’s a tension, of course. They’re all waiting to find out how Eliot is, to find out what they need to do to get him back safely, without bringing the CIA down on them all. But there’s more to it, something Nate doesn’t really want to think about. He wouldn’t be Nathan Ford if he turned away from thinking it over, though.

When Quinn’s voice starts up over the comms, it’s a relief. For a few seconds.

“Got a bit of a problem here, guys,” he says. 

“What kind of problem?” Nate asks. “You’ve had to fight?”

If Quinn has been in a fight, it means they won’t have long before the CIA goes after Riggs, which throws a whole set of plans out of the window. It also means they’ve stepped up the threat to Eliot, bringing it out of the realm of plausible deniability, which rules out more.

“Not me,” Quinn says. He only pauses for a fraction of a second, and it’s just long enough to tighten the worry in Nate’s gut. “Looks like I don’t have to play at being Riggs breaking Eliot out. They’re already gone, and I just barely made it away from a bunch of angry men looking for payback. And Nate? There were guns involved.”

“Eliot?” Nate asks, not really sure quite what he’s asking. 

“Don’t know. Doubt he’d use them unless he had to, but from what we know about this Riggs, he’s not shy of guns. The last guys the two of them came up against are still out cold. More than one of them was shot. One of them is critical.”

“But they got away?” Nate asks, sharing a look with Sophie, then with Hardison, then with Parker, who nods. Eliot will have made it out. If he’s still upright, he’ll have made it out. 

“Nate, he doesn’t know about Conrad,” Sophie says. 

“And he doesn’t know where we are,” Hardison says, and throws his arms out when Sophie and Nate look at him. “He wouldn’t let me tell him about all the back-ups. Case he was compromised. What? This felt like a possible compromise sort of situation. And we were gonna go get him! Man was chained to a bed. He shoulda still been there all ready for Quinn to pick up!”

So, Eliot’s out there in LA with an unstable cop, the CIA on his heels and no knowledge that Conrad is behind all this. Oh, and no idea where his team is. Perfect. 

“Find out what you can but get back here,” Nate tells Quinn. “You see any signs of them, you tell me before you do anything. I don’t need you going missing, too.”

There is nothing else Nate can do for now. He doesn’t look at Sophie as he pours himself a drink.


	55. Chapter 55

Riggs pulls Eliot over to the bed and drops him onto it. The guy lands in a heap, grunting but not making much effort to control himself, and Riggs takes a second to hope really hard that Eliot gets through this. He doesn’t include himself, because he can’t, but he’ll fight to stay alive as long as he needs to in order to get Eliot back to his people. 

If Eliot wants to go back. 

“You sure we can’t try-” he starts.

He’s still leaning over the bed, hands braced on the mattress, so Eliot doesn’t have far to reach to grab Riggs’ jacket and yank him almost nose to nose. It still manages to be surprising. 

“We ain’t going near them,” Eliot growls, his eyes managing to be clouded and fierce at the same time. 

“Okay. Okay, I heard you the first time,” Riggs says, and waits until Eliot’s grip loosens. 

He can’t blame the guy, though. It’s the same reason he isn’t taking them to Murtaugh’s, even though he wants to. Huh. He wants to go to Murtaugh for help, even with this. He probably needs to watch that. It’s dangerously near to a real connection, and that family pushing its way in has already tied lines to him he doesn’t want. He doesn’t think he wants them, anyway. 

And he gets it. Eliot knows the CIA are after him, and he doesn’t plan on bringing that kind of trouble home with him. Riggs just wishes he knew how they were going to keep away from the CIA themselves. They aren’t exactly burdened with options here.

“You sure we’re good here?” he asks, pushing himself up enough he doesn’t feel like he’s trying to get a kiss from Eliot. “Who owns this?”

“I do,” Eliot says. He sounds worse again, fainter and woozier, but Riggs is fairly sure the guy could still fight if he needed to. 

“You own a random apartment?” Riggs asks, and presses on. “Won’t they know to look here? The CIA, I mean?”

Eliot smiles, and there is no warmth in it at all. It’s more the way a shark smiles, or a wolf. 

“Nah. Got bolt-holes set up so far off the record even Hardison can’t find ‘em.”

“You have bolt-holes your own family doesn’t know about?”

And that is a level of paranoia Riggs has never had. Never. He’s moved his trailer and not told people, but that’s not been because he’s hiding from his own family. Exactly. Avoiding a meal at his father-in-laws doesn’t count. There’s keeping yourself separate when the pain is too much and there’s having secret apartments set up that your own lover doesn’t know about. 

“So Hardison can’t find it,” Riggs says. “What about the CIA?”

Eliot just laughs. His eyes roll back as he does, like he’s having trouble staying awake, and he shifts on the bed, the laugh cutting off as he grimaces. 

“Man, you have got to tell me if you’re hit,” Riggs says. “You got medical supplies in this black-ops bolt-hole of yours?”

Eliot makes a noise low in his throat that could mean anything. His eyes are almost closed now, but Riggs can see how labored his breathing is. 

“Well then,” Riggs says. “Guess I’m going to have to check you over myself. If you wanted to get me inside your clothes, you could have just said.”

At Eliot’s total lack of snark, Riggs frowns. He expected some kind of response to that. Before he gets to searching Eliot for wounds, he searches the apartment. It’s small, contained and spartan. Functional was clearly more important in its creation than comfortable, which given the touches Riggs saw even in the place above the pub seems odd. It is stocked. Riggs finds knives, a couple of guns, ammunition and a medical kit. There are long-lasting emergency rations and a safe he doesn’t try to get in to. He picks one of the guns up and turns it over, considering, before placing it back where he found it. Given the way Eliot reacted to Riggs using a gun, he’s pretty sure these are a last resort kind of deal.

He takes the medical kit and sets it by the bed before kneeling and checking on Eliot. The guy has to be awake from the way he’s breathing and from the tension all through his body, but he doesn’t respond when Riggs asks how he is. Not unless the twitch of his lips counts, but that could be a spasm of pain. 

“Right. Okay, then,” Riggs says. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He moves carefully, describing what he’s doing as he does it. He’s been around too many soldiers with PTSD, and too many guys in shock or in pain, to risk startling someone who likely fits into all three categories. 

Unzipping Eliot’s top, he folds the material back and finds a hole. There’s no blood. He unbuttons the shirt next, deft enough he doesn’t need to rip any buttons off. There’s no hole in the shirt, and no signs anywhere on Eliot’s torso that he was hit. Which means a bullet ripped through his hoodie and missed him entirely.

“You are on lucky bastard,” Riggs mutters. 

It’s just the existing injuries and the drugs, as though that’s not enough. It does let Riggs relax a fraction, and he takes a moment to get a breath. Since the gun fired he’s been halfway convinced that Eliot’s slowly bleeding out and will fade away at any minute. This is… This is better, but now he isn’t facing imminent medical disaster, Riggs feels the tremor of unused adrenaline in his body, making his hands shake more than they normally would do.

He makes himself keep going, finding other injuries have reopened, swabbing away the blood and checking on the bruising. The shock of dark across two of Eliot’s ribs is a worry, but it doesn’t look like it’s done any new damage, as far as he can tell. 

Eliot rouses enough to protest as Riggs gets him stripped down to his underwear, calmly insisting on getting a look at every inch of potentially damaged skin he can do. 

“You want to heal or not?” he asks, when Eliot bats away his hands for the third time. “Come on, El. You know you need to recover. Just let me make sure there’s nothing nasty hiding.”

Eliot mumbles something that might have been a joke or an insult or a threat, but he drops his hands. By the time Riggs has cleaned the guy up, Eliot’s slipped into sleep. 

Riggs sags when he’s done, going to wash up himself and take care of a few cuts he’s picked up before he eyes the chair in the room, a hard-backed thing with no padding, and the other side of the bed. It’s a big bed. 

“Fuck it,” he says, before rolling onto the bed next to Eliot and closing his eyes. 

Eliot’s sleeping, which means he thinks this is safe, or as close to it as they’re getting, and Riggs is not going to pass up the chance for a nap, at least. They need a plan, but they aren’t going to get much further until Eliot is conscious. He feels the gritty pain of exhaustion in his own bones and behind his eyes, crowding out his better thoughts. 

Some sleep will clear up that at least, and they can work on next steps.

Eliot can’t really be meaning they’ll stay away from his people. Riggs is amazed they didn’t break Eliot out before Riggs could. Whatever’s going on here, it’s big enough and tough enough for a team as skilled and as bold as the one he’s worked with the past few days to turn to caution. 

With all the worry of it in his mind, it should take Riggs a long time to sleep, even with being as tired as he is. Instead, with Eliot breathing next to him, he finds himself pulled into something almost relaxing, and there are no dreams.


	56. Chapter 56

Trish keeps expecting Riggs’ name to come up. Roger is on edge, pulling back from snapping and ranting in a way that’s come to mean Riggs is involved. Only, he doesn’t come out and say it. Not tonight. Instead, he eats his way through the salad and pasta she’s made, barely even complaining about it, and the tension in his jaw is probably as bad for his heart as if she’d made ribs or burgers instead.

She shares more than one look with the kids and she’s on the verge of coming out and asking what’s wrong when the hammering at the door pulls Roger out of his chair. 

“Maybe that’s Riggs,” RJ says. “And Dad can have it out with him and calm down.”

“Maybe,” Trish says, because there’s no point pretending Riggs is anything but important to her husband by this point. Hell, he’s important to them all by now. The chair he sometimes sits on seems empty when he isn’t there, instead of just unused. “Eat your food.”

RJ rolls his eyes, but he does as he’s told. In some weird way, Riggs has made Trish’s son less argumentative, like the boy’s seen Riggs rebelling against being alive and has decided things could be a lot worse. 

A burst of shouting from the other room, swiftly cut off, brings Trish to her feet. She gestures for the kids to stay at the table and goes to investigate. In the lounge, Roger has a hand over his eyes and Riggs is watching him from half a room away, his arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t look quite right. There’s less ragged despair about him and more impending violence.

“Roger?” she asks. “What’s going on. Hey, Martin.”

Riggs doesn’t answer at first. Then, he shakes his head and smiles, and it’s warm and charming and…wrong. 

“Hi, there, Mrs Murtaugh,” he says, as though they’ve never met before. “I was just having a conversation with your husband here. Nothing to worry about.”

“Mrs Mur…?” Trish looks again at Roger, who slides his hand down to his mouth and shrugs. “Since when does Martin call me Mrs Murtaugh? What’s with the formality? Have you two had a falling out? Is that what all this is?”

Roger finally takes his hand away from his face, and his mouth is set in a line that’s far angrier than she was expecting, even for an argument with the guy who, let’s face it, has been crawling into the best friend spot for weeks. 

Before he can speak, though, Martin gets in first. And that drawl isn’t quite right, either.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” he says, holding his hands out like he’s about to bow, “but I’m afraid I’m not Detective Riggs.”

“You-” Roger starts, and stops as the man who apparently isn’t Riggs tilts his head. That’s all it takes, and Roger shuts his mouth. He looks offended about it, but he stops. 

“You don’t think your wife deserves to know, Rog?” not-Riggs asks. “Not the choice I’d make, but then, I’m not married. I suppose it’s outside my experience.”

“What’s in your experience?” Trish asks.

She wants to believe this is just Riggs playing a joke, but with that sense of wrongness, it’s either Riggs has had a psychotic break or this really isn’t him. Either way, she takes a part step to put herself more fully across the doorway back to her kids.

“Fighting,” the man says, looking up and to the side as though reading an internal list. He sounds cheerful. “Plenty of fighting. Stealing. Killing. The usual for my line of work. Just now, I’m needed to find someone. Two someones. And as one of them’s your partner with the pretty face, I thought I’d come and ask you where he might go, Rog.”

Trish can’t quite find the words to reply. Killer? And Roger isn’t arguing. He just looks…angry, but like he knew this already. 

Before she can line up anything to say, the guy grimaces and taps his ear. 

“You got one of those ear-buds in?” Roger asks, his words tight. “You got their voices in your ear right now? You tell them they gonna answer to me, sending a killer into my home, into my home with my wife and my kids in it-”

“They didn’t send me,” the man says, and waves a hand in a circle near his own ear. “Nate’s telling me off right now, as a matter of fact, and ordinarily I wouldn’t go against one of Nate’s plans. The guy’s good. But this is Spencer we’re talking about, and he’s gone missing-”

“Spencer’s missing?” Roger asks, and Trish didn’t think he could get much more tense, but he manages it. “And he’s taken Riggs? Why haven’t I been called?”

Trish gets her hand on Roger’s arm before he takes off, because his body language makes it clear that’s what he’s about to do. 

“Roger?” she asks. “What is going on? Who’s Spencer? Why would he have taken Riggs? Why does Riggs have a double?”

“Hey, now, Riggs is my double,” the man says, and takes a step closer, his hand out. He stops when Roger all but growls at him, but he doesn’t look cowed. He grins. “Call me Quinn. And I’ve not met this so called double yet, but I highly doubt he’s got my charm and good looks.”

“He hasn’t got ‘killer’ on his resume, either,” Trish says, even though she knows Riggs has killed people. To save others, sure, but he has killed. “Now tell me what’s going on. Everything.”

“Could take a while,” Quinn says. “And I really need to find Spencer before the CIA do. The guy’s hurt, and he’s pretty dumb for a smart guy. He’ll put himself through Hell to keep his team safe and they don’t know which bolt-hole he’s scuttled in to. If it’s one of Riggs’-”

“Riggs don’t have any bolt-holes,” Roger says. “Not except his trailer, and that’s his home. Why would he take Spencer there?”

“Because he helped Spencer to escape,” Quinn says. “Whatever you think about Eliot Spencer, you’re wrong. He’s not the bad guy. The CIA are framing him. I don’t know why yet, but they’re hunting him for a reason and we need to get to him first. Now, are you in? Or are you going to let the two of them be tracked down like foxes and torn to pieces?” 

Trish looks at Roger, and he has that over-strung look he gets right before he does something he’d yell at anyone else for doing. 

“Oh, no,” she says. “There are still glaring holes in this. Sit your ass down and fill in those gaps. You too, Quinn!”

With a lifted eyebrow and something of a smirk, Quinn does as he’s told, and Roger sits down a moment later, perched on the edge of the couch. He doesn’t break eye-contact with Quinn, who looks to find that amusing. 

Trish stays standing. 

“I’m not going to insist you start at the beginning,” she says. “Not if Riggs might be in danger. But you give me a better idea of what’s going on. Right now.”

Roger talks, and she listens, and realizes it’s already too late to stay inside the lines on this one. 

“Well,” she says. “Looks like you’ve all messed this up enough. You, Quinn, you’re here without your boss’ approval?”

“Wouldn’t call him my boss,” Quinn says, “but yeah. Figured we needed more eyes on this.”

“You’re right,” Trish says. “You tell this guy we’re coming with you back to wherever he is. It’s about time you all started keeping each other in the loop.”

She turns, and catches Roger’s question on his face.

“I’m going to get a babysitter,” she says. “You’ve all run around without adult supervision for long enough.”

She doesn’t know what Quinn’s boss is saying to him, but the face he pulls at that is enough to have her hurrying up. She tells herself the hard beat of her heart is concern for her husband, that he might get himself even further in over his head, but she knows at least some of it is for Riggs. Just from what they’ve told her, and even if this guy the CIA are after is on the side of good deeds, Riggs has got himself mixed up in something truly dangerous this time.

He’s going to need his family to get him back out.


	57. Chapter 57

Riggs wakes up warm and comfortable, and it takes him a moment to work out that he can feel breath on the back of his neck. For a moment so short it shouldn’t even register, he thinks of Miranda. 

The jolt of that is enough to have him off the bed and spinning back to see who it is, and he blinks when he sees Eliot, fast asleep and curled up right next to where Riggs was. The guy is completely out of it, breathing deeply, and on his side in sleep he looks…cute. He’s kind of folded in on himself and Riggs gets a flash of what it might be like to lie in a cell, all alone, not knowing if rescue is coming. Maybe Eliot learned to sleep like that, his hands tucked in and his head bowed forward, his knees drawn up, to keep himself warmer and safer in damp, rat-infested places. Or maybe he just curls up like a small animal naturally. 

Riggs is never going to share any of that with the guy. He values not being actually dead-

And that’s a new thought. Huh.

He tests it for a minute and finds that undertow of exhausted despair has lessened. Doesn’t mean it won’t come back - there’ve been times over the last few months when he’s almost been able to forget it, when the adrenaline was high and he was on the hunt for a murderer. That was the thrill of the chase, though, and the buoying thought that this stunt might send him home. He isn’t sure what this is, yet, and he sets it aside as much as he can. 

There was coffee in one of the cupboards when he checked the night before, and in the thin bars of light falling through the slats in the shutters, he goes to make a pot. No cream, but it’ll do. There is sugar, but it’s some fancy kind and he isn’t sure if it’s meant to go in coffee or baking. He spoons some in to his drink anyway. 

Movement behind him has him turning in time to see Eliot blink awake, going from curled up and resting to coiled and still. There’s a real difference.

“Hey, man,” Riggs says. “Made you a coffee. How you doing? You leaking blood all over the place or are we good?”

Eliot responds with something like a growl, and that does not help the impression Riggs has of an animal. Hell, he’s woken up more than once with the dog pressed up against his back, and he wishes he had not thought that. Eliot will probably be able to tell somehow.

“I’ll just leave it on the table,” he says, and takes it over to the bedside table on Eliot’s side. “Say, you aren’t going to tell Parker we slept together, are you? The woman looks like she could take my head off.”

“She could,” Eliot grumbles. He has no need to sound proud of that. “But she won’t care you slept in the same bed as me.”

Riggs isn’t so sure, but he keeps his mouth shut. He has more important things on his mind, in any case. 

“Do we have an actual plan?” he asks. “Or are we just going to hide in here until we die of boredom?”

“Could stand to have a little boredom,” Eliot says, which has to count as too ludicrous to even listen to.

He still hasn’t moved, either, and Riggs is wondering if it’s because he can’t. From here, he can see the line of Eliot’s back and the bulk of his shoulders. He sees Eliot’s hair spread on the pillow and the nape of the guy’s neck. It looks oddly vulnerable. 

“Can you move?” he asks, when Eliot doesn’t say anything else for a while.

“Sure,” Eliot says. Grunts. Then, “Just don’t wanna.”

“You hurting?”

Riggs thinks Eliot isn’t going to answer, but after a few moments he sighs and speaks in a voice with a little more strain to it.

“Some. Not too bad. I should be able to move if we need to.”

“Not what I asked, buddy,” Riggs says, even though he knows what Eliot means. He’s been in situations himself where the issue of whether his pain will stop him from acting has been the important thing. “You need to heal up. I asked if you hurt, not if you could push through it.”

Again, there’s a pause in which Eliot must be deciding whether to speak, but again he does.

“I’m hurting. All right? What do you expect?”

“I’m expecting to be hunted down and hauled away by the CIA for helping a deadly fugitive,” Riggs says, injecting a little more cheer into that than will probably be good for Eliot’s blood pressure. “So if we could skip the grouchy defensiveness and give me a straight answer, that would be swell.”

“I ache,” Eliot says, sounding more business-like and less bad-tempered. “I’m bruised, my ribs the worst. Cuts are healing, but they sting. Whatever they gave me seems to have pretty much worn off, but I’m groggy and I feel sick. My head’s spinning a bit, but not like last night. I don’t feel shot.”

“Because it missed you,” Riggs says, not asking how often Eliot’s been shot that he can tell just by lying there. The guy was too out of it last night for Riggs to be sure Eliot took on board the lack of a bullet when Riggs was checking him out. Over. Checking him over. Riggs has been shot, and it was not fun. His foot still hurts when he thinks about it, and it’s not like that was the only time. Eliot says it like it’s almost as commonplace as a bruised knuckle. “Your shirt’s seriously maimed, though.”

Eliot barks out something that might be a laugh, and rolls over. He has bruises on his face, one eye blackened and his jaw shaded. Riggs is almost sure he’s escaped that kind of thing, mostly because Eliot spent most of the time they were fleeing getting in between Riggs and any opponents. The few blows he took were from people already disoriented from meeting Eliot, or else weren’t from the best fighters in the game. Eliot’s basically a human shield and Riggs has no idea yet how to help the guy out of the mess he’s in. 

Instead, he reaches down and helps Eliot upright. It’s more hauling than helping and Eliot complains, lifting a hand with the clear intent of pushing him away. 

“Shut up and let me help you,” Riggs says, and Eliot does. When he’s propped up, with the pillows behind his back and his coffee in his hands, Riggs sits down on the edge of the bed. Going all the way to the chair seems pointless. “Seriously, man. Do we have a plan? Because it’s not like I’ve got a hundred strings tying me down, but I do have a job and a partner and a dog that keeps coming round for food.”

“I’m working on it,” Eliot says. 

He’s clutching the coffee mug, his fingers white around it, and ‘ache’ must be code for some greater level of pain, given that and the strain around his eyes. Most people would have missed it. Riggs isn’t going to mention it unless it becomes a problem. 

“We got any way to contact your team?” Riggs asks. “I’ve got my phone, but I don’t want to bring Rog into this. At least your guys are used to keeping out of the cops’ clutches, right?”

“Not the CIA,” Eliot says. “We’ve had to cut and run before, but not when they’ve got one of us in their sights like this.”

And he means not when it’s just been him, and he can run and keep them out of it. Eliot might not be suicidal, but he’s got his own issues from what Riggs can see.

“You think they’re going to be all right with you shutting yourself away from them and hoping the CIA get bored of looking?” Riggs asks. “Man, that just doesn’t seem like your best plan.”

“They don’t need-”

“They need you back,” Riggs says. “Come on. You think if I could get Miranda back I’d let anything stop me? Don’t make them lose you.”

Eliot frowns, his lips twitching, and Riggs realizes he used Miranda’s name. He brought her up. Voluntarily. He runs a hand over his face and considers leaving. The CIA must be after him, too, now, but maybe a hail of bullets is one way to go out. Except he doesn’t quite feel he can take that step, not just now. Not until this is resolved. For one thing, the CIA might decide Murtaugh knows something about where Riggs will be. And for another, that sense of some solid ground under him is still there, and he isn’t sure yet whether he resents it.

“I ain’t married to either one of them,” Eliot says quietly, but there’s some give there. 

“Like it has to be official to be real,” Riggs says. “Come on. I didn’t need to be married to her to love her. Just made it so other people saw it, and you guys don’t need other people to see you. Do you?”

This is far from a usual conversation for Riggs. Murtaugh can joke about a list of things they don’t discuss, if it is a joke, but he’s right. Thing is, Riggs needs Eliot invested in going back, or he can’t see how either one of them gets out of this. Even more, Riggs can’t face the thought of Parker and Hardison missing Eliot the way he misses Miranda, and he absolutely can’t take the idea that the Murtaugh’s might get caught up in it. So, he needs to push Eliot into wanting to get back to his people, so Riggs can have some hope of safely getting back to his.

“The people who matter see us,” Eliot says. His brow is still furrowed.

“You mean Sophie? And Nate?”

“And a few others,” Eliot says. “Not many.”

There’s still strain in his voice, but it’s softened by the affection Riggs can hear. 

“You gotta have some way to get in touch with them,” Riggs says. “I get going to ground to rest up, and I get not wanting them hurt, but Parker is fierce and Hardison has skills I never even knew existed. Sophie’s a damn mind reader and Nate Ford, well, I think he might be some kind of evil wizard, but he can help you, here. And that Quinn? I figure he knows how to fight, from what I’ve been told.”

“Yeah. You could say that,” Eliot says, and there’s a tiny uptick of one side of his mouth. 

“Who else you got?” Riggs asks. “Maggie? She in on all this, or just good for some cons?”

“Maggie’s family,” Eliot says, “but she ain’t being put at risk.”

Riggs doesn’t point out that Eliot already had a gun to the woman’s head in the last few days, because even with live rounds he’s sure Eliot doesn’t consider it a risk to Maggie when he’s the one holding the gun. 

“Just trying to get an idea of what we got to work with,” Riggs says. “But unless the CIA have your team under surveillance, isn’t your best bet to get in touch with them?” When Eliot still hesitates, Riggs pushes. “I gotta tell you, El, I don’t see them quitting. Like I said…”

He stops and looks away. An image of Miranda, her eyes serious, springs to mind. She was full of life, but she knew how to push for things, too. She knew how to push through things, even living with someone back from a war zone. 

“You wouldn’t quit on Miranda,” Eliot says. “She sounds like quite some person.”

“She was.” Riggs isn’t tearing up, so he doesn’t have to wipe his eyes. He does run the back of his hand over his face again, but that’s just because this whole thing is tense. That’s all. “And so are your guys. You don’t get in touch with them, they’re just going to keep looking. And one way or another they’ll end up in the middle of this, so you might as well call them in.”

Eliot lifts his mug, draining the coffee and reaching over to set it down on the side-table. He winces at the movement, but his expression is nothing but determined when he looks at Riggs again.

“Fine,” he says. “But you can’t blame me for wanting to keep them safe. Time was, I’d have been out of this city using an alias even Hardison don’t know about. Hell, I still could. I could plant trails for the CIA to follow, to keep them away from my team.”

He doesn’t say ‘family’, but Riggs hears the word anyway.

“They’d follow you,” he says. “Your team.”

“Yeah.” Eliot says the word on a breath, and looks over at the dresser against the far wall. “I stashed a phone here we should be able to use. I think. Least, Hardison said it was untraceable, but that was over a year ago and I ain’t been back here to update it since. Could be a risk.”

“Hey, man, so’s most anything worth trying,” Riggs says, patting one of Eliot’s legs through the blanket. His hand lands a bit higher up Eliot’s thigh than he meant for it to, but Eliot doesn’t seem to notice. “It in that dresser?”

“Nah,” Eliot says, and that’s something closer to a smile. “In the wall behind it. You’re gonna have to break through.”

“Well, now,” Riggs says. “You’re in luck. Breaking through walls is something I’m good at.”


	58. Chapter 58

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone had the best winter festival they could have. And that we aren't all completely downtrodden by 2016 continuing to be a bastard. Here, have some more of this fic.

Hardison keeps an eye on Quinn’s tracker as he approaches the place the team are hiding out. He keeps a very steady watch on it, because right now it seems to be the only thing he can do. Searching for a way to break into what the CIA have on Eliot in any way that’ll help isn’t working. Looking for Eliot on facial recognition on the cameras round the city isn’t working. Nothing is working. 

“He’ll be here in five,” he tells the room, and glances up at the others.

Parker’s been perched on the back of the couch for the last hour, her arms wrapped around herself and her face set. Sophie is still staring at those files, and Nate looks not far from as upset as he did when they went up against Dubenich. 

When he was avenging a family member’s death.

But no. No. They won’t be needing to avenge Eliot, because they are going to get him back and they are going to find a way to keep him from the CIA. No way in any of Dante’s circles is Hardison losing his man. Besides, if the CIA do find Eliot before the team does, Parker will help Hardison steal him back. 

Hardison just has to have faith.

“We need to find Eliot,” Nate says. “That is not going to be easier with the cop and his wife here.”

“Hey, man. She’s a high-powered lawyer,” Hardison says. “She might have connections we can use. Knowledge. Sneaky lawyer ideas.”

Nate doesn’t look convinced.

When Quinn approaches the door, Hardison goes to open it, not waiting until the guy is close enough to knock. Not like Hardison hasn’t got cameras set up to show him who’s arriving. Quinn barely changes his stride, nodding and passing into the apartment. Detective Murtaugh flicks a look at Hardison that promises a curfew and not being allowed to go to that party he’s been desperate to hit. It’s almost cute. 

Mrs Murtaugh fixes him with a stare that chills him. To his bones. His actual bones. If Hardison weren’t so tense over Eliot, and so full of worry, he’d think twice about going against what this woman wanted. As it is, he hasn’t got time to care past shaking his head and shutting the door behind them all.

“Welcome to my home,” he says.

Murtaugh turns from where he’s looking round the room and raises an eyebrow.

“Thought you lived above that bar,” he says. “You moved in the last day?”

“Yeah,” Hardison says, and leaves it at that. “Now, you here to help or do I gotta find a way to contain you?”

“Hardison,” Nate says. 

That’s all he says, and it’s been long enough since Nate walked out with Sophie that Hardison should bristle and protest. Should. Maybe. But Nate being in charge has a sense of…of comfort to it. Parker is her own kind of genius, the sparkling, prismatic kind where the light bounces at odd angles but makes a brilliant piece of art, but Nate has more experience, still, at running a con. Nate was at the helm for some real dangerous Death Star level shit. Besides, Hardison is man enough to recognize his own almost Pavlovian reaction to that tone. He shuts his mouth, crosses his arms, and says no more.

“And just how exactly are you going to contain us?” Murtaugh asks, taking one step closer to Hardison. 

He stops when his wife throws out an arm and catches his shoulder.

“Roger,” she says. And Murtaugh stops. He doesn’t look happy about it, but he stops. “Who’s in charge of this mess?”

“That would be me,” Nate says. “Have you got a speech prepared for us out of hand kids?”

Hardison sees the look Sophie gives him for that, but the Murtaugh’s don’t. They have their backs to her and don’t seem to have noticed she’s there. Quinn just snorts.

“I’m Trish,” Mrs Murtaugh says, letting go of her husband with a warning look and crossing to Nate. She sticks out her hand and waits as he regards it like he’s looking at a slightly unpleasant insect. 

Sophie coughs. Nate takes the hand, a smile warming his face. 

“Pleasure,” he says. The sarcasm is weaker than Hardison was expecting. “And what precisely are you expecting to be able to do?”

“Tell me what’s going on,” she says, “and let’s see.”

If anyone on the team is surprised when Hardison has a briefing ready at Nate’s request, they don’t show it. Not like it took much of his processing power to throw it together, but it does shut up both of the newcomers. By the time they’re done, Trish looks almost as fierce as Parker. Detective Murtaugh looks angry. 

“You all seriously expect me to believe that man is innocent?” he asks, pointing at the screen. “Hell, no. He’s talked Riggs into doing something crazy, and-”

“When has Riggs ever needed talking into something crazy?” Trish asks, but there’s something in her tone Hardison is sure counts as affection. “If Riggs has helped this Eliot out of custody, then he’s got a reason. You know your partner, Roger. He isn’t easily intimidated.”

“Spencer,” Murtaugh says, placing stress on the name, “has killed more people than anyone I’ve ever arrested. Ever. In my life. He knows interrogation techniques-”

Trish quiets him with a wave of her hand. She’s standing with her weight on one leg, her hip cocked, and Hardison sees Sophie looking her up and down. Probably reading things in Trish’s body language and in her outfit that Nate will want to know about later. Sophie still hasn’t made her presence felt, and for Sophie Devereaux to be fading into the background is a rare and unusual sight. It will also be deliberate. 

“You said that file is faked,” Trish says, looking at Quinn, who nods, and then at Hardison, who nods harder. “Exactly how much of it is based on fact?”

Hardison opens his mouth, looks at Parker, at Sophie, at Nate, and shuts is again. He shrugs.

“We really don’t know,” Nate says, standing. He swirls the liquid in his glass as he moves over to stand in front of the screen Hardison’s using, staring up at the last image like he isn’t fully aware of everyone else in the room. There can’t be much in the image of Conrad that Nate doesn’t already know, but his eyes track over it like it’s the Rosetta stone. “Eliot isn’t exactly into over-sharing.”

“Yeah, well, that I can relate to,” Murtaugh says. He grimaces, like he hates any sign of agreeing with these dangerous criminals he’s spending his time with, but Hardison is almost sure the guy softens a bit. 

“So Eliot could have the skill set to force Riggs into something?” Trish asks. 

“From what I understand of your Martin Riggs,” Nate says, “I very much doubt he’d be easily persuaded. And whatever Eliot may have done, or not done, in his past, he wouldn’t ruin your partner’s life to save himself.”

“And you’ve no idea where they might be?” Trish asks, apparently accepting that for now. 

“None,” Nate says. “Hardison?”

“Yeah. No. Not a whisper. Eliot knows how to stay hidden, even from me for a while, and I ain’t stupid. He probably has at least one bolt-hole he ain’t told us about.”

“I still have places,” Parker says. She doesn’t appear to register the way the Murtaugh’s jump. Maybe they missed her, too. “Eliot will. But we don’t know where they are, so it doesn’t help us.”

“And I have been looking,” Hardison says. “Trust me, the guy is smart. Like, way smarter than he lets on. And I think maybe he’s picked up some of my skills after all, or at least knows what might stop me from tracing him, because-”

This time, it’s a phone ringing that cuts him off. They all turns to look at Parker, who frowns and pulls a phone from somewhere. It isn’t her usual one. It’s a back-up. And only a handful of people have ever had that number. 

She answers before the phone can ring for a second time, and Hardison is already tracing it. They have no way of knowing how long Eliot will be on the phone for, assuming it is Eliot. Dude might be calling to say he’s going dark and this is the last they’ll ever hear from him. When Hardison gets his hands on that self-sacrificing, heroic, stoic, stupidly-

“Eliot,” Parker says, and Hardison has to keep himself working instead of stopping to watch her talk to their guy. “What’s going on?”

She listens, tilting her head, and Hardison sees the shift to her expression that means she relieved. 

“Good. Yes. Hardison will send you the location. No. No, you can’t stay away from us. Because. No. Don’t be- No, Eliot!”

There’s a longer pause. Hardison already has the call recording, but he doesn’t put it up for them all to hear. Not yet. He’ll wait to hear what Parker wants on that front. 

“Riggs is right,” Parker says. “Listen to him. Because you’re ours and we protect what’s ours. Come home. We’ll find a way. Together. Right? It’s what we do. Yeah, well, we have Quinn for that.”

Quinn sketches a lazy salute from where he’s now leaning against the far wall, a smug look on his face that Hardison is almost sure is part an act. 

“Do you need someone to come and get you? Fine. Okay. Then…then just both get here as soon as you can, or I’ll come looking.”

She pulls the phone away from her head and glares at it.

“He ended the call,” she says. 

“And?” Nate asks. 

Hardison listens, but he does it through a stab of frustration. Eliot ended the call before he could locate the origin. He has it narrowed down, but if Eliot does decide to stay hiding, they still have quite a search ahead of them.

“And Riggs has talked him into coming back,” Parker says. “Maybe he isn’t as crazy as I thought.”

“Oh, no, he’s crazy,” Murtaugh says. That is definitely relief in his voice. 

“But he knows how important family is,” Trish says. “So, does this mean we can start planning how to sort this whole mess out? Because I do not plan on living in a world where the CIA might come after my kids.”

“Fair enough,” Nate says. “Sophie?”

As Sophie stands, Hardison sees both Trish and Murtaugh start. Murtaugh even puts a hand over his heart, which is a kind of dramatic Hardison normally doesn’t even reach.

“I think we might be able to do something with this range of personnel,” Sophie says. “Exactly how far are you willing to go?”

She’s got her assessing face on still, but she speaks in that way that means people will sway into her orbit, and already Trish looks like she wants to talk to Sophie. 

“For family?” Trish asks. “You just tell us what we have to do to make sure Riggs comes home. But I want some common sense here, people. No-one is to jump off any buildings, shooting or not.”

“I’m not promising that,” Parker says.

They are nowhere near being out of the woods yet, but Hardison is overtaken by the sudden urge to laugh. They have more people than they’ve had on a con in a long while and Eliot is on his way to them. As Sophie, Parker and Nate talk, he goes back to his attack on the CIA. No matter how it all goes down, he needs to make sure all record of Eliot Spencer is erased from their database. 

Once they’ve beaten Conrad, Hardison needs to know Eliot won’t have to worry about an assault from that direction again. His eyes are already gritty from lack of sleep, but he’ll do it. For family, he’ll do it and more.


	59. Chapter 59

Riggs follows Eliot’s directions as they make their way through LA. He saw the way the guy planned their route from the hospital to his bolt-hole, the confidence with which he got them past anyone who might notice them, and he’d bet a pretty sizable chunk of cash on them having kept away from being filmed. If he’d really left himself a chunk of cash to bet with.

So, he follows Eliot’s directions, finding it easy to slip into that head-space that means he can take note of the hand gestures and curt instructions. He does keep an eye on how well Eliot’s moving. The guy is still injured and he still looks more like he should be falling back asleep than have gotten up and moved out. Thing is, Riggs is the one who talked Eliot into going to his team, and he doesn’t regret it. 

Sometimes, a team at your back just makes sense. 

They arrive at a nondescript door just over an hour and a half later, Eliot visibly straightening as they make their way up the last stretch of corridor.

“Pretty sure you’re not going to fool them into thinking you’re all healed up,” Riggs says.

Eliot ignores him.

The door opens before they reach it, and Hardison looks Eliot up and down once before pulling a face and calling over his shoulder.

“Parker. Get the first aid kit.”

“I’m fine,” Eliot grumbles. “Riggs already took care of that.”

“Oh, Riggs did, did Riggs?” Hardison asks. “And just exactly what was Riggs taking care of? Hmm? You pick up some new souvenirs on your way out of that hospital? You know, the one full of CIA operatives. What? You think we weren’t gonna get you outta there? You had to-”

“Shut up, Hardison,” Eliot snaps. 

Hardison shuts up. He also takes a step back and lets Eliot stalk by, even if it is one stumble from becoming a limp. Riggs is no stranger to trying to turn walking away injured from a fight into some kind of one man procession, but Eliot has it down. 

Riggs follows.

“There you are!” Trish says, reaching him and folding him in a hug before he’s fully taken in that she’s there. 

He stops moving, because it’s that or drag her a few feet along the floor, and it takes a second before he has it together enough to hug her back. He lets himself dip his head into the hug just briefly, squeezing and letting go. She takes slightly longer to disengage.

“What were you thinking?” she asks, stepping back only far enough to let Riggs run his hand through his hair and share a look with Murtaugh, who does not look impressed. “Helping someone break out of custody when the CIA is after them? You need to be more careful, Martin.”

“I, er.” He stops. Over Trish’s shoulder he can see Eliot having some kind of staring contest with Parker, but none of his people seem to be about to touch him. “I figured letting someone be disappeared by the government wasn’t very gentlemanly of me.”

“Like I’m a damsel in distress,” Eliot says, without looking away from Parker.

Parker snorts.

“The CIA aren’t a dragon,” she says. “Anyway, I like dragons. I don’t like them.”

“Some kinda ogre, maybe?” Hardison says. He’s still looking at Eliot like there’s a lecture lined up, but there’s relief in there, too. “Or, like, an evil army of evil? Conrad’s some kinda dark wizard.”

Riggs is close enough to see Trish’s face at that, and he knows that twitch to her lips. He has no idea what’s amused her, though, beyond what any halfway normal person might find entertaining about hearing Hardison and Parker talk.

“Not a damsel,” Eliot says. 

“But you could do with some help on this one, though,” Hardison says. 

“Eliot knows he needs our help,” Parker says. “He was just forgetting for a while, but now he’s remembered.”

Eliot sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose, but he nods. 

“Yeah. Yeah, if there’s a way to get this done without any of you being caught in the crossfire.”

“And if there isn’t?” Nate asks. The tone is soft on the surface, but there’s something hard under it. “What then, Eliot? You’ll disappear on us? Draw the fire?”

Parker leaves the couch and circles Eliot, still not touching him, until she’s standing near Nate and Hardison. She looks stern.

“You aren’t running away,” she tells Eliot, who turns to face her again. 

“It’s my job to keep you sa-” he starts, something like anger flashing in his eyes. 

Riggs sees Trish and Murtaugh step towards each other at the same time he hears Parker cut Eliot off.

“Yes, it’s your job to keep us safe. All of us. And that means not breaking us up. We’re going to find a way to get you away from the CIA and still finish the job, and you aren’t going anywhere without back-up until it’s done.”

Riggs expected Eliot to bristle at being chastised, at being bossed about, and especially in front of near strangers. He at least expected some kind of sarcastic comment, if not an angry one. It’s not like Riggs is a stranger to being hauled over the coals, or reminded of how hot glowing coals can be, and he hardly ever just takes it. Eliot, however, stares at Parker for long enough it’s uncomfortable, then nods. It’s a tight, controlled nod, the sort that means an order has been taken. 

“Good,” Nate says. “Now we have that settled, we need to work out a plan.”

“A plan,” Eliot says. There’s a dullness to his voice Riggs wasn’t anticipating. “Against the CIA?”

“Sure. While you two have been cuddling up someplace all cosy, we’ve been trying to find a way out of this for you,” Quinn says from his place leaning against a wall, untucking one hand from around his own torso and gesturing at Eliot’s team and at the Murtaughs.

There’s a catlike laziness to it that makes Riggs want to sit down and review if it’s anything like the way he moves. And…cuddling up?

Riggs doesn’t think he’s reacted, but Quinn pauses, narrows his eyes, and smirks in a way that looks like any and all humor has been stripped from it. He pushes away from the wall and takes a few steps closer to Riggs, angling his head in a way that is far more predatory than is comfortable.

“What’s that?” Quinn asks, as though Riggs actually said anything. “I hit a little close to home with that one? Hey, Eliot, you been getting friendly with this guy? Have you got no sense of decency, my friend?”

“Lay off, Quinn,” Eliot says. “Riggs has been more help than you were the first time we met.”

“First time we met, I nearly put you out of the game,” Quinn says. “Things change.”

“Yeah,” Eliot says, some of his bite back. “Now I know there’s a guy with your face who I don’t mind being in bed with. Shut up!”

The last bit is directed at Hardison, who looks like he has plenty he wants to say. Sophie and Nate exchange a look Riggs can’t read and both Trish and Murtaugh look a question at Riggs. Parker barely changes her expression. Quinn just grins. 

“Hey, if you need to practice with the low-rent version first, my man, I get it,” he says. “You got to build up to something this rich.”

“Oh, knock it off,” Sophie says. “You can all play attraction-chicken later. No-one in this room thinks Eliot would cheat on Parker and Hardison, and frankly I’d take Riggs over you at the moment, Quinn. At least he isn’t being childish.”

“No offense, Sophie, but you picked Nate over everyone,” Quinn says. “I’m not going to be using your judgment as a sign of anything on this one.”

Riggs is usually the one making the jokes that other people find unsettling, but he’s not used to being surrounded by so many people getting involved in this kind of talk when they have something so serious to deal with as escaping being hunted down by a whole organization of trained operatives. 

“Y’all can fight over Eliot later,” Hardison says. He doesn’t seem especially upset, and Riggs wonders how often he has to face people coming on to his boyfriend. He does seem irritated at them getting side-tracked.

“Agreed,” Trish says, rallying. “I came over to see what exactly was going on here, and nothing I’ve seen makes me think this is under control. I need to hear some plans. Right the hell now.”

“How about you, Rog?” Riggs says. “You here to help, too?”

“I’m here to help get you safe,” Murtaugh says. “And if that means I have to haul your ass back to the precinct then so be it. I don’t know what to make of all the rest of this. Are these people serious? They’re going to take on the CIA?”

“Eliot and me, we kind of already did,” Riggs says. 

“Some of them are still out cold,” Quinn says cheerfully. “Pretty good swathe of destruction, there. Every time I think age might be slowing you down, you prove me wrong, Eliot.”

“You let me heal up and I’ll show you how much I’m not slowing down,” Eliot says, but it sounds like habit.

“Hey. We’ll find plenty of people for you all to hit, okay?” Hardison says. “Probably. What are we planning, anyway? Because I still don’t… Oh. Wait. Just wait right there, people.”

Riggs finds himself watching Murtaugh and Quinn as Hardison leaps for one of his computers. With Murtaugh, he’s checking how his partner’s holding up, and that vein in his temple sure is pulsing. With Quinn, it’s more the bizarre sense he’s looking into some funfair mirror. He can see why people have mixed them up, but Quinn is lighter, more put together. A contract killer looks less unbalanced than Riggs does and that is…that is quite the thing to realize, is what that is. 

“While we’re waiting, can someone tell me how anyone thinks this guy looks like me?” Quinn asks. “I still don’t see it.”


	60. Chapter 60

Eliot doesn’t lean into Hardison as he walks into this latest apartment. He doesn’t grab him into a quick hug. He certainly doesn’t kiss him. He sees how Hardison holds himself back, keeping his reactions smaller and less obvious than he would in different circumstances, and it stabs at Eliot to know it must hurt the guy. Hardison sometimes acts like he thinks both of his partners are cats, prickly and prone to only wanting contact on their own terms, but Hardison himself prefers it when they touch. Eliot knows this. He just can’t deliver right now.

With Parker, it’s different. They don’t always touch. Sometimes, there’s barely an inch of space between them even when it would make sense for there to be, and she prods at his bruises and fastens things into his hair and generally gets leeway that no other living person gets. But they also communicate without being near each other and without speaking.

For a while, he thought maybe Hardison was troubled by that, but the guy has better balance than a gyroscope, just as long as he knows he’s loved and is able to care for the people he loves. He can find it tough when neither of them want to be touched, though.

And part of caring for Eliot when Eliot is stressed and injured and still on alert can be to give him physical space. They all three of them know this, so Eliot should be fine with his partners abiding by that guideline. And he is. Of course.

It’s just he also wants to pull them both into bed and stay there with them until this whole mess melts away by magic. It’s not an option: it’s never an option. If he touches either one of them, it’s going to be harder to remind himself of that, though.

Always assuming he doesn’t feel his skin writhing and prickling to get him away. He never has entirely been able to control that response when it happens. 

So. For now it’s just best all round he doesn’t have them in his personal space. 

Eliot stops partway across the room and meets Parker’s gaze. She wants him where she can see him and she doesn’t want him to do anything that might get him more hurt. She also doesn’t know how to fix this - he can see it in every line of her. 

Riggs’ comment breaks through his silent conversation with Parker and he points out he’s no damsel. There’s too much noise, too much speaking, after that, and Eliot wants to shout at them all to just leave. He doesn’t. Once Hardison leaps for one of this computers, Eliot does fade into the background, keeping an eye on them all.

He watches the way Quinn eyes up Riggs, the way Riggs stares back, and the way Trish and Murtaugh display every sign they want to bustle Riggs out of the room or shout at him or both. This room is full of too many people with too many agendas, with too many loyalties and interests and aims. Not that Quinn has any loyalty to anyone but himself, whatever Hardison and Parker like to joke, but this whole thing could all too easily get even messier if the wrong person decides to get their person to safety at the expense of others.

Eliot doesn’t have any intention of putting his own safety ahead of anyone else’s here, not even Quinn’s. Not unless he has to. Letting any of his actual team get hurt is so far beyond possible that there’s no point thinking it. If any plan looks like it’s risking that outcome, Eliot will throw himself at the CIA. Hell, he’ll throw himself in the path of a bullet in front of the CIA, so they can’t use him and they can’t have any reason to hurt his people. But he doesn’t need to say that. No sense upsetting anyone.

Besides, he suspects they already know.

“If we don’t got a plan-” he says.

“Do be quiet, Eliot,” Sophie says. She looks over at him and turns to face him properly, her arms crossed. “And do sit down before you fall down. Come on. No arguing. The couch is right there.”

And it is. All empty and inviting. 

“No.”

“No?” Sophie rolls her eyes and changes her stance so her weight is mostly on one hip. It’s probably some body language programming meant to make Eliot obey her. Or maybe it means ‘sit’. “What is it with men and refusing to accept they need a rest? Honestly, I wonder if any of you ever get a decent night’s sleep.”

“I do,” Murtaugh says. “I am perfectly capable of an excellent night’s sleep. Least, I am when someone isn’t making himself a target for the CIA.”

“Once!” Riggs says, firing up with more intensity than he was using with Eliot back in the bolt-hole. He holds up an index finger and jabs at the air with it. “Once, Rog. Give a guy a break.”

“You do get ‘once’ is about ten times too many?” Murtaugh asks, turning to more fully face Riggs. 

The body language almost closes a loop between him and Riggs. They’re not a million miles from the zone Nate and Sophie can occupy on a con, focused on each other, feeding off each other, but leaving space for others to observe their performance. Eliot wonders how much really is performance with them, how much is a learned tactic to distract or soften an audience. 

“What did you want me to do, Rog?” Riggs asks. “Leave El chained to that bed?”

Damn. Every eye in the room turns to Eliot, even if only briefly in some cases. Every reminder they have that he was pinned down makes it more concrete in their minds. He doesn’t need them focusing on him being hurt, or on him being helpless. Not that he was completely helpless in that bed. Not as far as they know. They know about the beatings and the cuffs and the drugs from being held captive in that room, but just as long as Riggs doesn’t mention the drugs at the hospital-

“The CIA pumped him full of some drug!” Riggs exclaims, throwing his arms out. “He just got one lot out of his system and they fed him some kind of truth serum.”

And everyone’s looking at Eliot again, this time with varying degrees of disgust, concern and calculation. The calculation is mostly from Nate. He sees something in Sophie’s eyes that he doesn’t recognize, but he’s probably just exhausted. 

“Truth serum?” Hardison asks. 

Fuck. Now Hardison and Parker have shifted into concern mixed with that particular kind of censure they get when they think Eliot’s broken some rule. 

“You’re meant to tell us,” Parker says, and she’s part Parker-the-girlfriend and part Parker-the-mastermind. “Eliot, we need to know if you’ve been hurt.”

He scowls. Pretending more anger than he feels doesn’t always work, but he’s at a disadvantage. He doesn’t really think it’ll make them back off, either, but rolling over without at least a semblance of a fight feels…wrong when it’s more than just the three of them. 

“You already knew I got hurt,” he says, and sighs. They did know, and they’ve already said he isn’t allowed to try and ignore it, so now’s the time to give in. If he does need to take action later, they’ll be less likely to expect it if he gives in now, with enough of a protest that they believe it. He grimaces and lets himself fold over, sliding one hand over the bruised ribs. “Don’t know what it was, anyway. Made me…foggy. But it’s gone now. That’s it.”

“Foggy?” Hardison asks, and looks at Riggs. 

Eliot feels his jaw tense, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“Yeah,” Riggs says. “It was like he was drunk or something, and talkative. But he slept it off when we got away.”

“Talkative?” Sophie asks. She has no cause to sound intrigued. He thinks that what he’s hearing. There is sympathy there when she meets his eyes. “Eliot?”

“Didn’t spill anyone else’s secrets,” he grinds out, and lets himself collapse onto the couch. His head hits the back with a thunk and he closes his eyes. If they want to see him as some kind of victim here, and come over all protective and scolding, then let them. For now. “Get on with planning something that’ll work.”

“Still need a minute,” Hardison mutters.

“Eliot,” Nate says.

Eliot grunts. He doesn’t bother to open his eyes or to move. Now he’s decided to let them think he’s given in, he might as well do it properly.

“Eliot, do you know why the CIA are coming for you?”

Another grunt. There are too many possible answers and none of them are definite. Anyone with access to his files could come up with reasons to come after Eliot, either to kill him or to use him. No. Killing could have been done already. Put poison in place of that drug and he’d be gone already. Unless they want some specific information.

So, either they want some intelligence, something still of use even after years of working with Leverage, or they want to persuade him to work for them. Or force him to. 

No way to be sure of which variable is in play, not without more information himself, and-

“Eliot,” Nate says, tone more abrupt than it needs to be. “Why are they coming for you now?”

“I ain’t got a clue,” he says into the darkness. 

Now he’s been ordered to stand down, to let them deal with it, the pain he’s been controlling wants its due. His ribs still hurt, the way the damn things always do when they get bruised, and he wasn telling the truth when he said the drug worked its way out of his system. Least, as far as he knows. But it’s left him feeling hung-over, which is all kinds of unfair when he hasn’t been drunk in years. 

“Er, guys,” Hardison says, and it’s the tone he uses when he’s found something he kind of wants to back away from. “I’ve got something. We…might want to reconsider the guest list.”

“Oh, hell no,” Murtaugh says. “You are not kicking me out of here until this is done. Or at least ‘til my family are out and safe. You got any idea-?”

“They know, Rog,” Riggs cuts in. “They’re a family, man. Come on. They know what it’s like to see the people you love in danger. And they help people for a living!”

“Oh, they help people?” Murtaugh asks. Even with his eyes closed, Eliot can imagine the facial expression that must go with that tone. “How exactly do they help people, Riggs? By holding them hostage? By getting them to pretend to be criminals? By getting them to beat up the CIA?”

“Yeah, actually,” Parker says. “Sometimes. What’s your point?”

Grimacing, Eliot forces himself back upright and opens his eyes. He hasn’t even tried to stand and almost everyone is looking at him again. Hardison has worry heavy in his eyes as he glances at Eliot and back at his screen. Murtaugh looks like he’s half a second from trying to arrest Eliot and take him back in. That would not go well. 

“Calm down,” Trish says. Maybe to Eliot. Maybe to her husband. “We just want this solved. You say this man isn’t a danger to anyone.” 

That is definitely aimed at Riggs, who doesn’t even hesitate before agreeing. Eliot sees Parker open her mouth, but Nate shakes his head and she shuts it again. And, yeah, Eliot is far from not being a danger, but he isn’t the guy in the fake files. Not anymore. Not…not in the actions he chooses to take.

Doesn’t mean he’s free and clear in terms of guilt. Hell, he still hasn’t seen that fake file, and there’s so little chance anyone knows his full history that it’s next to impossible, but he’s done plenty. A look at his real file, if one still exists after Vance and The Italian and Hardison have all been involved, would have Trish as convinced as Murtaugh that Eliot needs putting away. More so. 

“I’m just saying,” Hardison goes on, as though the interruptions never happened, “maybe we don’t need everyone crowding round, here.”

Now he’s looking, Eliot sees the strain. Hardison has something he doesn’t want to share with the room. 

“You got something about what they’re planning?” Eliot asks, because the slightly ashen tone to Hardison’s skin is not a good sign. “Or something on my past?”

“Perhaps we can give you guys some space,” Riggs says, already angling his body in a way that will gather up the Murtaughs, and glancing at Quinn as though considering rounding him up, too. “Maybe we can go on a supply run. Anyone needing snacks? I could go for something sweet.”

Parker moves up right next to Hardison, slipping around Nate and staring at the screen. Her frown goes from focused to tense in a few moments. 

“We’re not being kept out-” Murtaugh says, and stops when Eliot stands. 

He still looks angry, but there’s an edge of wariness there that Eliot wishes he didn’t already have three plans on how to use. Tactical planning can be key, but it doesn’t make him any closer to being the kind of person he used to think he’d be. 

“Does it give us what we need to put this to bed?” Eliot asks. “Come on, Hardison. Murtaugh already thinks I’m dark-side and it’s not like you’ll shock Quinn.”

Trish might be a problem, and possibly Riggs, but Riggs is already in the CIA’s cross-hairs now and Trish is a civilian. No way is Eliot letting her out of their sight. Come to think of it, they should have someone fetch the kids.

“Tell them,” Parker says. “Just tell them, Alec.”

She meets Eliot’s gaze for just long enough, and nods. He nods back. It’s his history and his decision, and if he wants to make it without knowing what might be about to get shared, then that’s still up to him. 

“I don’t think they want you dead, man,” Hardison says. “Least, not right away. There’s all these mentions of an operation. The dates are vague and it seems like the don’t got a whole lot of details. From what I’m seeing, they think you can fill in the gaps.”

“Let me see,” Eliot says, and crosses the room faster than Murtaugh and Trish must have been expecting, given how they start. Riggs and Quinn have eerily similar expressions as they watch him. “This a mission?”

Hardison shifts to the side as Eliot reaches him, and Parker steps back, so Eliot’s left with space around him as he scans the information. Damn right it’s vague. The dates are redacted or seem to change with each mention, the names are all code or blanks and… Oh. Right. 

His name, near the bottom, on a list of names he will never forget. 

The report doesn’t need the codename, and it doesn’t need any other details but those. Eliot will remember those names, and the faces attached to them, for as long as he lives.

“What is it, man?” Hardison asks. 

Eliot takes a breath. His ribs hurt, but not as bad as seeing this. He wonders if he can get away with not telling them, but they at least have to know the stakes involved, as far as Eliot can tell. 

“A mission,” he says. “That name there? That’s me.”

It’s not Eliot Spencer, but Hardison just nods and holds Eliot’s eyes for a moment. They can deal with it later, with the name Eliot had during those years. If they need to. 

“What’s it mean?” Hardison asks. “What are the other names? They in your unit?”

“In a way,” Eliot says, and he wants to close his eyes, to escape this even for a blink, but the inside of his own head in not the place to avoid this particular thing. “We were sent on a mission together. Yeah.”

“It didn’t go well?” Nate asks. “Or you picked up information the CIA now wants? What are we dealing with, here, Eliot?”

“I don’t know,” he says, because he doesn’t. He can’t be sure. “But that wasn’t a mission for any intelligence. It was a…it was a disposal.”

“Assassination,” Riggs says. Hard to say if he sounds disapproving or not. “They sent your team in to kill someone.”

“Not exactly,” Eliot says. He doesn’t look at Riggs as he goes on. Of them all, Riggs might be the one who will find this the least forgivable. “They sent us in, sure, but the targets… The targets were us. Someone wanted to clean house. Least, I think that’s what happened.”

“You think?” Riggs asks. If he’s shocked that the government, the armed forces, might turn on its own, there’s no hint of it.

“They gave me orders,” Eliot says. He can hear the lack of emotion in his own voice, now, but he can’t change it. He told Conrad he would never forget a single one of them, and these weren’t his first kills, but they have their own place on the list. “Told me I had to take them all out.”

“Your own men?” Riggs asks. 

“Yeah.”

“And did you?”

Eliot hesitates. But he said Hardison should just share it. He made that decision.

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t that simple, of course. It was one of the least simple nights of Eliot’s life, and it shook him out of the stark mindset his orders over the previous years had instilled in him.

“Some of them. Caught on it was cleaning house. Stopped. Didn’t matter. The rest didn’t make it out. They had back-up plans.” No-one speaks as he takes another steadying breath. “Had them for me, too. But I ran. I made it.”

“How many others escaped?” Riggs asks.

“None.”

Now, Eliot avoids looking at anyone because he can’t see the sympathy in Hardison’s eyes right at this moment. He can’t see the understanding on Parker’s. He just can’t. Even though he only met him a few days ago, he can’t look at Riggs.

“How come you haven’t been hunted down before this?” Nate asks. 

“You do the work I did, you end up with…information,” he says. “With…leverage. I’d got enough on the right people that I had my name, that name, declared dead. And Eliot Spencer got to resign. He got to go back to being a civilian. Close as you can ever be one after… Just, after.”

Not that Eliot is a fake name. It was the guy who died in a bloodbath in some tiny spec on a map that isn’t even named in the reports who was fake. Except he wasn’t quite fake enough, and Eliot didn’t manage to bury the corpse of what that guy learned well enough. Wet-work for money didn’t seem so bad, not after what that guy had done.

“This is why you left?” Sophie asks. 

“Yeah.” Not that it was the only reason, not the only incident that was way over the line, but it was the last one. “And it must be what they want with me. Something about this mission. Something like this, digging it all up, it’s not going to be easy to get it buried again.”

“We need to find out more about it,” Nate says. “We need to know exactly what about this mission is suddenly so important.”

“How are we gonna do that?” Eliot asks. 

He wants to believe Nate will find a way out for him, or that Parker will, but when they’ve gone up against an agency this big before, it hasn’t been because they’ve been hunting Eliot, and it wasn’t over anything like this.

“You say everyone else died?” Nate asks, and if he sees how Eliot barely conceals a flinch, he doesn’t give any hint of it in his voice. “Then we let them think you told someone, or that someone else did escape. Yes. That will draw them out. We give them a second survivor.”

Eliot looks round at Nate in time to see the direction of the man’s attention, and he tracks across to Riggs as the detective locks onto Nate, his eyebrows lifting. 

“Detective Riggs,” Nate says. “About when did you join up?”

Riggs narrows his eyes and doesn’t look at Eliot.

“You want me to pretend I’m part of this?” he asks. “From all the way back? Because I wasn’t even in the same-”

“Records get altered,” Hardison says. “I can’t get in and change what they have. Not yet. Not unless I get better access, and I’m talking physical access. We want to get this wiped all away, we need to make a run on the Death Star. But I can confuse things enough round and about the place they doubt their own records are right.”

“You’re joining the dead murder-squad,” Parker says.

And Quinn and Riggs both get a hand on Murtaugh’s shoulders as he opens his mouth. 

“Don’t,” they say, before Quinn gives Riggs a look and leaves him to go on alone. 

“And this’ll get them off our backs somehow?” he asks. “Putting me more in it will get us all out?”

“It’s a start,” Nate says. “Hardison, make Detective Riggs a member of the undead assassins. I think I’m starting to see how we can get everyone out alive.”


	61. Chapter 61

Eliot killed his own people.

Riggs listens to Murtaugh argue, with Nate and with Quinn and with anyone who speaks, but his own mind spins. The guy Riggs just broke out of CIA custody killed his own people. And Riggs thinks he should feel more about that than he does. He should do. 

It’s just so hard to square that knowledge with the man Riggs has seen in front of him over the time he’s known Eliot. Eliot’s the one who said no guns, who said no killing if it could possibly be avoided. Even though Eliot’s the one who’s been hurt the worst by all of this, he was willing to make it harder to get out. Eliot was already working on getting a young girl out of a bad situation when they met. Eliot’s people trust him, and Riggs thinks he trusts the guy, too.

He also believes that Eliot did what he says he did. 

“What exactly do you want me to do?” he asks, pitching his words so they cut through the chatter and arguments around him. Everyone falls silent as Riggs stares at Nate. “How’s this play out?”

Nate regards him. There are other words Riggs could use: considers, studies, examines. None of them are comforting. Riggs sees a look that tries to tease him apart every time he meets with Cahill, and that’s bad enough, but this is…more. This isn’t trying to work out where the knots are so they can be eased away; this is pulling each thread away from the others and inspecting them all for their usefulness. 

He didn’t think he’d miss Cahill’s assessing gaze.

“First, we need to set up your identity as Eliot’s old military buddy,” Nate says. 

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Eliot says. “He already helped me escape. They’ll buy a previous connection.”

“But Detective Martin Riggs has a solid life history,” Hardison says. “And I’m gonna have to mess with that. Sorry, man. Gotta make it look like you made up most of your life. Nate, this ain’t gonna stand up to scrutiny for a whole lotta time.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Nate says. He appears confident. Centered. Like playing the CIA is right in his wheel-house. “It just has to last for long enough to get Conrad and his people where we want them.”

“Which is where?” Quinn asks. He sounds almost eager.

Nate smiles. Riggs is no stranger to crazy, but he’s sure the calm, controlled part-smile on this man’s face is twenty times as scary as any manic grin Riggs has tried out. This isn’t a guy who’d leap off a ledge into hell in a desperate move, or because he didn’t much care if he died doing it. This is a man who’ll dance others right over that edge and have arranged for the devils to catch them.

“Conrad thinks he’s got Eliot boxed in,” Nate says. The glance he throws at Eliot reveals nothing about what Nate thinks of the facts they just heard. It might as well just be data for all the emotional weight he seems to be giving it. “We’re going to let him think that. And then we’re going to show him the box is a maze.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Murtaugh asks. “Am I the only one here who doesn’t get how that is any kind of a plan? At least when Riggs throws himself onto a moving car he’s going with the moment. He doesn’t make weird comments about it ahead of time like it’s a well thought out strategy.”

Riggs feels the familiar mix of frustration and affection bubble up in his gut.

“Rog, first of all, I don’t strategize. I’m about tactics. Second of all, I make excellent cryptic comments. Maybe you just miss them.”

He knows that isn’t going to calm Murtaugh down, but nothing about this is likely to calm Murtaugh down. The man lives to be wound up. He seems to enjoy it. Riggs isn’t sure, but he thinks if Murtaugh ever manages to achieve inner peace, that might be what stops his heart again.

“I do not miss them,” Murtaugh says, spacing out the words as the sentence goes on. “You do not… You know what? No. No, I am not getting into this. We’re standing here with some criminal mastermind planning to turn the CIA on you. You get that, right? It’s important to me that you get that. And for what? To save a man who’s just admitted to murdering his own people? How do we know he won’t turn on us?”

“Eliot isn’t going to turn on us,” Quinn says. “I’ve seen him take a beating and say nothing. Hell, first time we met I broke his rib and he still hasn’t ever turned on me since we’ve been working together.”

“See, Rog?” Riggs asks. 

“To be fair, I ain’t decided about your partner yet,” Eliot says, crossing his arms over his chest. And wincing. 

Murtaugh splutters, but Hardison and Parker shift their stances and it’s so painfully clear their whole focus has latched onto Eliot that everyone else leaves space for them to speak. At least, that’s how it seems to Riggs.

“You, my man, are gonna sit down again,” Hardison says, looking for all the world like he wants very much to take hold of Eliot’s arm and lead him back to the couch. He even puts out a hand before pulling a face and withdrawing it. “Like I said, it’ll take me some time to get Riggs set up. And I might need some details, but not just yet, so you go plant your ass on that couch and stay there.”

Eliot scowls and opens his mouth, but whatever rule the others have about not touching Eliot, Sophie must be exempt. She drifts over to Eliot, gathers him up, and has him on the couch before Riggs can quite process it. He sees Trish give Sophie a steady look and a small nod, and wonders how long it will be before the two of them talk. 

“You stay right there,” Sophie says. “One foot away from that couch and I’ll…I’ll staple you to it.”

Eliot’s expression falters, his brow and his jaw and his mouth all doing something that makes Riggs think the guy has at least five things he wants to say and isn’t sure which one to go with. Riggs thought Murtaugh had a wide range of facial expressions, but Eliot can mange more than one at a time. 

“I’ll find her a staple gun,” Parker says. She sounds deadly serious. 

People settle a little after that, Hardison working and Nate occasionally leaning in to murmur something in the man’s ear. Parker watches it all with an intent look and Eliot looks like he’s passed out on the couch. The lines of his body suggest that isn’t entirely true, but with Sophie sitting next to him looking like she’s keeping guard it isn’t like anyone’s going to test it. 

Trish is talking to Murtaugh, one of those conversations where their voices are low and quiet, and Riggs almost misses Quinn moving up beside him until the guy speaks.

“You got a minute?” Quinn asks, and smirks as Riggs…doesn’t jump. Completely doesn’t jump. Quinn nods his head to the far side of the room, where a door stands partway open. “Got a few things to say.”

Riggs follows Quinn, catching Murtaugh’s eye and nodding to show it’s okay. It’s fine. Riggs has no issue walking into another room with his double - a double who sounds like he’s some version of Eliot without the same charm. 

On the other side of the door is a darkened room. A bedroom. A single large bed fills most of the space, and Riggs can imagine all too easily how someone will have bought it with three people in mind. For a moment, he finds himself wondering who does that kind of thing in their relationship, who decides on which bed they’ll have and which carpets and which cookware. 

The click of the door closing brings his attention back to Quinn. The guy stands like he’s got his life together, all tidy and neat, a smile playing about his lips that makes Riggs think of a cat about to pounce. 

“You bring me in here to give me some ‘there can be only one’ speech?” Riggs asks. There isn’t another way out of this room. It’s not a pressing thought, but he is aware of it.

“Not so much,” Quinn says. “Gotta say, I’m still having trouble seeing it, but maybe that’s the mustache.”

“Well, you’ve got the whole baby-face thing going on,” Riggs says, because he knows he did when he was younger, and Quinn doesn’t look quite as…well-worn as Riggs does when he looks in the mirror. “But what do you want to talk about, then? Compare childhoods? See if we’re twins?”

Quinn’s smile grows. It’s more unsettling than if the guy just attacked.

“Not overly concerned about that,” he says. “Hardison’s bound to be looking into it. If there’s anything I need to know, he’ll tell me.”

“You mean, if there’s anything Eliot thinks you should know,” Riggs says. 

At that, Quinn blinks, tilting his head.

“Now who exactly do you think’s in charge of this little team?” Before Riggs can answer, the guy huffs a laugh and goes on. “Oh, man, I kind of want to see you around them when they haven’t got Eliot to save. You’ll see how it is.”

“And here I was expecting to be told to back away from your crush,” Riggs says. 

The way Quinn looks Riggs up and down is…hard to define. A moment later, his expression is back to what seems to be normal for him.

“I wanted to check you’ve got no intention of bailing on this plan,” Quinn says. “Your partner, he doesn’t seem too keen on any of this. Don’t want you getting talked into leaving Eliot hanging.”

Riggs should hesitate. He should speak to Murtaugh. Instead, he pastes on a smile of his own, and sees Quinn look thoughtful.

“I ain’t got any intention of going anywhere until this is all done,” he says. “They need me to play… What was it? Undead assassin? Consider me drafted. Do I get dental?”

Quinn laughs. 

“I can see why he likes you,” he says. 

“Why who likes me?” Riggs asks. 

Quinn looks at him like he must be missing brain cells, but his smile stays in place. He moves closer and throws his arm around Riggs’ shoulders, and Riggs manages not to back away. It’s odd, having someone who apparently look like him so close. Riggs has been trying to avoid talking with himself for months. 

“Eliot,” Quinn says. “He fights by your side, he tends to imprint, but you? He went out of his way to get you on board. And hell, he let you sleep in the same bed? He likes you.”

“Suppose one screwed up vet can spot another one,” Riggs says, even though he isn’t about to claim Eliot is the same type of crazy that Riggs is. 

“He sees something,” Quinn says. “So, no bailing. Or I’m coming after you.”

Riggs considers telling Quinn he could just step in and play Eliot’s old team-member himself, but somehow it hasn’t seemed to occur to anyone else, and Riggs feels this is his job. Somewhere over the last few days, his team has grown just a bit. Now, it includes the Murtaugh’s, a dog that just insists on being his, and a man who’s killed enough to be seen as a threat by the CIA, but who won’t let Riggs kill anyone. 

“Understood,” he says. And he means it.


	62. Chapter 62

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. The depression and stress did the 'everything is drained and pointless' thing and I sort of...went flat. But here is another chapter. Hopefully, I can get another one out soon. 
> 
> Let me know what you think.

Sophie watches Riggs carefully. 

He sits in the chair in the hotel lobby with his coffee growing cold in front of him and his smile only slightly believable. The way he scans his surroundings isn’t quite like the way Eliot does it, but there’s enough of a likeness there that Sophie is sure he’ll pick up on anyone dangerous appearing. 

The guy’s trained, that much is clear, and Sophie’s grown used to Eliot’s controlled detonations of emotion, to the way her friend throws himself over the edge with an assurance that hides how close he came to self-destructing, once upon a time. 

She knows about Eliot feeling nothing, and she saw herself how ready he was to fling himself into danger, and she sees something of both of those things in Riggs. No emotion or too much, they both mean an overload of trauma. 

The similarities just throw the differences into stark contrast, though, and as she waits with Riggs and Murtaugh, she wonders if Riggs will explode in a way that takes them all out. 

He wasn’t happy to hear his wife, his Miranda, had been wiped from his history. It took some persuading to get him to give up the ring. In the end, Parker took it and made it vanish, but she did it with Riggs’ permission. Sophie didn’t miss the way Riggs’ eyes looked as Parker slipped the ring from his finger, and she doesn’t think she was the only one. Murtaugh looked worried, that was for sure.

“This has got to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever tried,” Murtaugh says, for about the tenth time in the last half hour. 

“You once saw me leap onto the roof of a moving car,” Riggs says, grinning in a way that sets Sophie on high alert.

“Seen you do that more than once,” Murtaugh says. “And you only have the excuse of being high once.”

The banter is, in its way, comforting. Eliot and Hardison haven’t stopped bickering just because they now sleep together. There’s an underlying sense that Murtaugh is really worried, though, and Riggs is crackling with that close-to-shattering energy she dealt with in Nate. Except it’s Eliot’s reckless physical activity and military training thrown in with Nate’s alcoholism and despair. She wants this job done.

In her ear, Hardison’s voice kicks in, coaching Parker through some programming thing that needs to happen deep in the belly of the building she’s in. It’s not going to get them to the CIA mainframe or whatever it is Hardison needs, but it’ll let them plant enough of Riggs’ fake back-story that they can sell the two survivors angle. 

She sees Riggs tilt his head, taking in the chatter, and Murtaugh shifts in a way that tells her he still isn’t comfortable with this. 

“Settle down, boys,” she says, raising her glass of iced water and smiling over the rim. “Wait for your cues.”

“Wouldn’t want to ruin the scene,” Nate says, and she might have words with him later about his tone, but he’s right, even if he is sardonic. “Eliot, are you ready?”

“Sure,” Eliot says, his voice harder to hear than it normally is. “Why not? This is just what I always hoped I’d get to do.”

And she can picture the way his mouth will be twisting and his eyes changing shape and intensity as he spits out that statement. Well, he can be as pissed off with it as he likes. He needs to do this and he needs to do this right. 

“Remember your motivation,” she says.

“My motivation is stop being hunted,” Eliot grinds out, and under the anger he so often carries there’s something closer to frustration, or desperation, that isn’t as usual. 

This is Eliot’s past coming back to claim him, and it’s pulled his team into the mess. Sophie knows how Eliot feels about his team being in danger. 

“We know who we’re up against, now, El,” Riggs says, grim and ebullient at once. “Just gotta get them where we want them and we can take the shot.”

No-one mentions how much harder this is likely to be than taking one shot, but Sophie takes Eliot’s barely audible muttering as a sign he’s subsiding. At least for now. She doesn’t want him wound up any more than he already is. He’s not healed, won’t be for a while, and the goal with Eliot really has to be to keep him from being hurt any worse. Once they get him free of this thing, and get that girl away from her father at the same time, they can ferry Eliot back up to Portland and make him take some time. Maybe Riggs would like to come, too. There’s a man who needs some kind of balm for his soul.

Sophie has got to find a soft spot for something other than drunk, hurting men. 

Eliot just growls. Sophie’s sure he does that partly to hide his pain, so Parker and Hardison won’t worry about him. Of course, she can hardly complain about someone covering. She’s spent half her life pretending feelings that aren’t strictly hers. It’s possible she’s wrong, as well, but she can’t see Eliot being just mildly annoyed with his past being dragged into the open like this. She remembers how he was after that business with Moreau, how he acted the same but was skittish around them for weeks. She’s a grifter - she could tell. 

“It’s done,” Parker’s voice says. “Eliot, go.”

Sophie sees Riggs twitch, like he wants to be in on whatever Eliot’s doing. 

Instead, they sit in near silence as they hear Eliot grumble under his breath, too quietly for them to make out, before raising his voice and shouting at someone. 

“Hey! You wanna try take me? Come on - make your boss proud!”

Sophie carefully squashes her nerves, listening to the sounds of boots hitting pavement, shortly followed by the familiar sounds of Eliot taking someone down. 

“Got it,” he says, and that’ll be the ear-piece Hardison said he wanted. 

With it, they’ll get in touch with someone high enough up in the CIA’s operation that they can start pulling strings, meaning within a few minutes, maximum, the CIA will be hearing from Eliot that he’s been double crossed by an old team-mate. Which means Sophie needs to start planting the idea in the people around them that she’s a hostage, and Murtaugh will need to ‘realize’ his partner isn’t really Martin Riggs, and take a bullet as Riggs pulls Sophie away. 

Staging a showdown between Eliot and Riggs is going to be interesting, as is persuading the CIA that one or the other can be talked into a deal if it means the other one goes down. Nate hasn’t said yet which one of them will have that particular aspect of the con. 

Sophie just hopes this is going to work out. Nate will have plans and back-up plans, but Riggs is clearly skating along an edge with this whole thing, and even Eliot can’t just keep taking punishment ad infinitum. 

Hearing Eliot’s voice again, this time delivering the message they’ve planned to the CIA over their own ear-piece, Sophie offers Riggs a small smile and sets down her drink.

“Are you ready to play kidnapper, Detective?” she asks. 

“It’ll be the highlight of my week,” Riggs responds, grinning that mirthless grin again, and reaches behind himself for his gun.


	63. Chapter 63

Riggs stands, his senses kicking into higher gear as he pulls his gun. It’s old training by now, and something he isn’t sure even his fellow officers understand. They’re trained to handle firearms, but not the way Riggs is. 

And knowing he’s playing up that military connection only makes the alertness sharper. It only makes him more aware of the dry wind on his face and the grit against his skin that he always feels when he doesn’t guard well enough against the memories. He’s not in a war zone now, and hasn’t been for years, but it’s right there at the edges of his mind.

Riggs knows himself well enough to get that Cahill has barely begun to dig down into his issues. 

He has the gun most of the way aimed at Murtaugh when Sophie screams. It’s realistic, he has to give her that. Murtaugh isn’t so hot with his role, but he’s playing a cop who’s horrified at what his partner turns out to be, so maybe it’s not so much of a stretch.

In any case, he goes down with what looks all too much like real blood splattering his chest, right over his heart. Riggs doesn’t flinch. He wants to, but he doesn’t.

Instead, with onlookers shouting and running for cover, he takes Sophie’s alias hostage and forces her out of the building, leaving Murtaugh ‘dead’ on the ground behind him. 

He realizes he’s listening out for his partner’s voice the whole way out, and has to grit his teeth and force himself to keep moving.

***

They run. Riggs has the route Hardison’s planned out for him imprinted in his mind, and he follows it, Sophie letting him drag her along beside him. 

She pretends it isn’t entirely under her own steam, because they don’t know who’ll be watching, and as they run she lets her persona drop, until he’s pulling along Sophie Devereaux and not who she was pretending to be. Nate’s plan involves the CIA buying that Eliot would be willing to turn an old war buddy in, and that means making it look like he’s got a personal reason to want Riggs gone.

Eliot was known for working alone. Riggs knows that now. Hardison’s briefing was thorough, even if Eliot did his best to look like it wasn’t happening. But now the guy’s known to work with others, with his team. At least in some circles, the fact that the great lone wolf Eliot Spencer gave his loyalty to a group of thieves and con men is known all too well. So that’s what they’ll use.

“You won’t get away with this,” Sophie gasps, as they round a corner and head down a set of steps. 

Which…really? Riggs almost calls her on the cliche, but she does deliver it well. He has to give her that. 

“Shut up,” he orders, and shakes her a little. Got to stay in character. Sophie was very clear on that. 

“He’ll stop you,” Sophie says, stumbling a little and knocking against him. She genuinely sounds both terrified and defiant. “Eliot will stop you, you bastard!”

The last bit is shouted, and Riggs knows they’re heading past a spot where they might expect to find at least one witness, because that’s all been factored in. Still. The idea of Eliot Spencer coming after him is…interesting. 

He shakes it off and keeps going. This is only one step in the plan, and he isn’t at all sure about it, except Eliot agreed it was their best chance, and Riggs can’t shake the trust he has in Eliot. Not that he’s been trying very hard.

So he snarls something he thinks will sound real and keeps running. They’ll be at the empty office building Hardison has prepared for them soon enough, and Riggs can set about pretending he’s killed Sophie Devereaux. If that doesn’t get the CIA on board with thinking Riggs’ new persona and Eliot are against each other, he doesn’t know what will.


	64. Chapter 64

Trish watches Nate Ford closely. The man looks perfectly in control, something she respects in a person, but she rarely sees even the best lawyer act so confident that they’re on top of the situation. If it is an act. Ford seems to really believe it. Trish is almost sure the man doesn’t even admit being wrong is an option.

“How often do your plans go wrong?” she asks.

Ford looks up at her, his eyes taking a moment to refocus from the screen he was looking at, and he raises an eyebrow.

“My plans?” he asks. “You don’t need to worry, Mrs Murtaugh. We have everything in place. Your husband will be just fine.”

“I didn’t ask whether my husband will be fine,” Trish says. “Of course my husband will be fine, because if he isn’t there’ll be a reckoning. I asked how often your plans go wrong.”

She doesn’t waste time thinking over what she’s been told about Roger, that he’ll be taken away by paramedics and that officers will turn up to take statements, and that somehow this will be handled entirely by Ford’s team and a few trusted associates. Apparently Avery won’t even get to hear about it. Trish knows how information can travel, but she’s cautiously hopeful that this really will fly under the radar. 

Once this is done with and Riggs is safe, when all of her family is safe, decisions will have to be made about who’s told what. For now, they need to get the CIA away from them. 

Ford still hasn’t answered, and she keeps her focus on him until he sighs.

“I have back up plans,” he says. “And back up plans for the back up plans. Trust me, Mrs Murtaugh: I’m very good at what I do.”

“Oh, I have not doubt of that,” Trish says, taking a step closer. She finds herself moving the way she does in a courtroom, quite without meaning it. “But I’ve known a lot of men who are very good at what they do. Doesn’t always mean it goes right for them. I’m a defense attorney, Mr Ford. And a lot of those men have been my clients, or wanted to be.”

If Nate Ford is thrown by that, he doesn’t show it. His mouth pulls into something that isn’t a smile, like he’s considering the options he’s just been told about on a menu and isn’t finding any of them too interesting, and he bobs his head in something not quite a nod. 

“Well, I’ll bear that in mind,” he tells her. And goes right back to staring at the screen.

Trish presses her lips together. She asked for an ear bud and Roger asked her not to listen to him pretending to die. She knows he doesn’t like her to worry, and that he doesn’t like to face his own mortality, but she’d feel better if she had more idea of what was happening. 

She glances at the clock on the wall. For some reason, it’s made out of forks, but Trish doesn’t intend to get into any concerns over interior decor. 

“Roger will be ‘dead’ by now, right?” she asks. 

Without comment, and without looking up, Ford passes her an ear bud. Trish waits to see if he’ll say anything, but he’s entirely involved with his screens, it seems. At least he’s putting some effort into this plan that has her husband playing dead and her kids hustled off to stay with family, and she is not looking forward to explaining her way out of that one. She isn’t at all sure her kids are fooled by the excuse they came up with. As long as they’re alive, though, and safe, Trish can deal with that later.

Right now, she inserts the ear bud and hears several conversations spring up at once, Riggs’ familiar drawl among them. How anyone can function, let alone play a convincing role, with all of this noise in their head is beyond her. She tries to separate the strands.

Riggs is yelling at Sophie, who sounds truly terrified as well as outraged. It’s good. Trish would even be fooled by it, and she’s used to working through the facades of people trying to give themselves a defense. 

“Keep an eye on the timing, Detective,” Ford says, calm and assured, and Riggs hesitates just slightly before continuing his diatribe against the government and the army and fellow soldiers who stab their team in the back. “Eliot, how are you holding up?”

“Quit asking me,” Eliot growls, low and almost soft. 

“He needs to know if your injuries are a problem,” Parker says. “You’re going to tell us if they are. We agreed.”

Trish hears some curl in that last sentence, something that says the phrase has more weight than it seems to, and Eliot sighs. Over the comms, and with all the other voices, it should be hard to make out, but she hears it. Perhaps she’s getting the hang of this already.

“Sure,” Eliot says. “They’re not enough to get in the way.” Then, more quietly, and reluctantly. “Not yet.”

“And you’re in place?” Ford asks.

“Right where he should be,” Hardison says, though Trish will never stop finding it freaky how the guy keeps tabs on people. “Everyone is, Nate. Hey, El, those guys are still circling. You gonna Pied Piper them a bit more?”

“Gimme a second,” Eliot says, and now there’s something anticipatory in his voice, something almost predatory. 

Trish swears she hears the moment Eliot bursts out of whatever cover he found. She certainly hears shouts as the men he’s leading take after him again, and a cry of pain, cut off, a few moments later. Ford nods as though that’s normal and presses something on the keyboard.

“Stay away from my keyboard, Nate,” Hardison says. “Boundaries, man.”

“I didn’t notice you had any when you all moved into my apartment,” Nate says.

Trish blinks. They all moved in with him? She’s picked up on the dynamic between Eliot, Hardison and Parker, and she has to say it intrigues her, but she didn’t think Nate and Sophie were involved with them, too. She isn’t entirely sure if any of the three younger people are actually together in the traditional sense, but there’s a trust and an affection, and she saw Hardison press a kiss to Eliot’s lips just as the man was about to slip out. 

“Keyboard. Away,” Hardison says. “Only press the buttons I labeled. Nothing else.”

Nate rolls his eyes, and presses a button. Trish is almost sure it doesn’t have a label on it.

“Nate!” Hardison says.

“Do you mind?” Eliot asks. “Kinda busy here. Could do without all the jabbering.”

The unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh is followed by what sounds like something metallic clanging and then silence. Complete silence on the comms, actually. 

“Riggs?” she asks. 

“Hey, Trish,” Riggs says, sounding like he’s just run into her at a party and is both delighted and surprised. “Eliot’s not the only one who’s busy.”

“Calm down,” Sophie says. “We have a blank spot for a few minutes. How’s the staging?”

“This isn’t a play,” Riggs says. “You get that, right? Not a matinee performance with roses and popcorn. I’m gonna spray your blood all over this place in about ten minutes.”

“Silly,” Sophie says, and even after only meeting the woman for a few hours, Trish can imagine how Sophie might be standing, one hip angled and tossing her hair back. “A matinee isn’t at night. And it’s fake blood. A death scene. I do love a good death scene. My best one was as the new president’s fiance. They built a statue to me.”

“And you wanted to go back for the unveiling,” Eliot says, sounding slightly out of breath. 

Trish sees Nate frown and wonders if Eliot normally doesn’t display any signs of physical effort. The Lord knows, Riggs can swagger into her house after what sounds like a demolition derby and apparently have no ill effects other than his hair being even messier than usual. If Eliot is finding this harder than normal, no-one mentions it.

“Well, we won’t have a funeral or a statue this time,” Nate says, “so you can’t turn up at either, Sophie.”

“Spoil-sport,” Sophie says. “I liked what Eliot said last time. I was hoping for something a bit more poetic this time, though. Maybe he could sing.”

“I ain’t sing-”

Eliot cuts off, and this time he sounds like he’s just straight up growling.

“What is it?” Nate asks. “Eliot? Eliot!”

“I recognize that guy,” Eliot says, voice hushed. “He was there, when I was sent after those men.”

Trish knows that by now, Eliot should be inside the building where they think the CIA have holed up, because they don’t seem to be staying where they should be. This whole thing seems to be off book. Parker may or may not be with him - Trish wasn’t clear on that part during the briefing. 

“Is this going to be a problem?” Nate asks. 

“Means he’ll know Riggs wasn’t on the team,” Eliot says. “Probably.” 

But he doesn’t sound sure.

“We’ll work around it,” Nate says. “Deliver the message.”

Eliot confirms, and they’re off again. The first message got the CIA team listening, and now Eliot’s upping the ante, taking something to the guy who’s causing all this fuss. Trish isn’t sure how wise it is to stir things this way, but she isn’t the one who does this for a living. 

The team continue working with an air of competence Trish has rarely seen, even when people aren’t risking themselves against the CIA, the different voices coming together and splitting apart to talk in smaller units and going silent at times, with Nate directing it all. 

She should be disgusted, or angry, or something, that a group of criminals are this well practiced, but she finds she’s just relieved. Impressed, even. She needs them to be as good as they think they are, because she needs Riggs and Roger and her kids, and herself, to all be able to go home. 

“Okay,” Nate says at last. “You ready, Sophie? Detective?”

Trish tenses. The first suggestion of how this could go down included Sophie breaking away from Riggs and running out into traffic, or Riggs hunting her down in a car, and Trish had been about to veto both when Sophie had narrowed her eyes, shaken her head, and announced cars were overdone. 

Riggs looked like he wanted a drink very badly during that conversation, and Trish is worried about how he’ll react to even pretending to kill Sophie. She supposes they’re all about to find out.


	65. Chapter 65

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been ages, but here's a short update. I have now left my career and can focus on something other than slowly being killed by stress and so on.

Riggs hears Ford’s question like the guy is standing right next to him. Sophie, standing several feet from him with her hands on her hips, raises an eyebrow. 

“Yeah,” Riggs says. “Yeah, let’s do this. Gotta make my debut sometime, right?”

His smile gets a look from Sophie that makes him very sure he never wants to discuss any of this with her. Cahill is bad enough, and Cahill has ethics. Well, more than a criminal does. Sophie doesn’t exactly have any code of conduct or professional standards she has to follow and Riggs is damned sure every single one of Eliot’s weird crew is used to getting results. 

“Counting down,” Hardison says.

Riggs feels that surge of adrenaline he’s learned to shape instead of fight. Sophie shifts, without doing much other than moving her hands from her hips, from confident woman to terrified, desperate victim. It jars with Hardison’s tone and Riggs, used to causing his own particular brand of chaos and still getting used to Roger taking any part, marvels at the coordination and control in what this group do.

“We are back on air in three, two, one. Action.”

“No!” Sophie’s cry picks up on the tail end of Hardison’s instruction, and by the time whatever blank patch gave them a window is over, she’s in full swing. “No, don’t! Please! I don’t know where he is!”

“Steady, Soph,” Ford says, sounding almost disinterested. “I can hear the exclamation marks.”

Riggs doesn’t wince, because he’s focused and high on adrenaline and maybe already working hard enough not to think about a bottle of something right now, but he imagines how Trish might react to Roger telling her how to do her job, and maybe Eliot and he aren’t the ones putting themselves in the most danger tonight. Sophie might just rise from the dead to tear Ford into strips.

“You know,” Riggs says, pointing his gun at Sophie, trigger finger held straight along the barrel. 

This isn’t Riggs throwing people off balance by giving into his unpredictable side. This is Riggs the soldier, wound up and angry but aimed right at his target. Least, that’s what he hopes is coming across. An ex-soldier pushed too far and looking for the right skull to put a bullet in. That’s what Sophie and Eliot told him to go for, and he doesn’t know which one of them chilled him more in the way they said it. 

“You know exactly where he is. You think I don’t know what you got going on between you? You’re protecting him.”

He moves as he says the last words, covering most of the distance between them, and Sophie cowers. 

“I’m not! I don’t know where he is,” she says, tears in her eyes and a tremble deep in her voice. “I’m not protecting him. I swear.”

“You are, and you’re a fool for doing it,” Riggs says. “You think he’d protect you? Where is he now, when you need protecting? Huh? Think he’s gonna swing by and save you?”

“You’ve got visitors,” Hardison says.

“Location?” Ford asks.

“Where we expected. At least three of them will be able to hear you by now.”

That means hear them without whatever technology was letting Riggs and Sophie’s little performance be enjoyed before. Hardison seems to know when other people are listening in, better than any tech specialist Riggs has ever worked with. The guy’s magic.

“Wrap it up, Detective,” Ford says. “Sophie, limit the theatrics. We’re going for brutal and bloody, not poetic.”

The whole time they’ve been talking, Sophie has been working from a few escaped tears to outright sobbing, her mascara running and her terror palpable. She’s almost on her knees by now, hands up like they’ll stop a bullet, and Riggs has the gun aimed right at her head.

“Don’t. Please,” she begs, the words broken on wet, heaving breaths. “I’m not… I swear… I…”

Riggs hears the click of a door behind him. That’s his cue.

“Then the only good you are to me is as a message,” he says, and fires.


	66. Chapter 66

Eliot pauses with his back to the wall, the next corner an inch away, and listens. He hears Riggs and Sophie talking, and feels that itch deep in his muscles that tells him to rain down destruction on anything threatening his family. 

He makes himself refocus on the corridor he’s in, listening for movement, for any sign he’ll be seen and have to engage. If he takes a few extra moments just to breathe, that’s not a big deal. 

This is all part of a plan. Everything that’s happening over the comms is happening by design. Eliot doesn’t need to listen in. He should mute it, keep his mind on what he’s doing until he’s back out of this place. If anything goes wrong and they need Eliot, Hardison can override the comms. 

Pushing away from the wall, he shifts the chatter on the comms from the forefront of his mind, but he doesn’t cut it out completely. 

The next stretch is as empty as it sounded. He was always quiet on his feet when he needed to be, but years with Parker have taught him to move nearly as silently as she does. Nearly. If there’s anyone behind the doors lining the corridor, they won’t hear him. Hardison, with Parker’s help, has the security cameras in hand. Nate has the overview. Eliot is as close to safe as he can be here. Everyone else is playing their part. He isn’t alone. Not really. There are a whole load of people at his back. It’s not like that night, when he went in surrounded by teammates, knowing he wasn’t really one of them, knowing he would kill them. 

‘Eliot?’ Hardison’s voice sounds louder in his ear than the others, with that distinctive crackle that means this is a line connecting just the two of them. ‘You okay, man? Your breathing’s all…hinky.’

Eliot pushes back the image of Hardison that springs up, of the soft concern in the guy’s eyes and the exact tilt of his head.

‘Hinky? Do you even know what you sound like?’

Someone standing a few feet away wouldn’t hear him, but it still has the hairs on the back of his neck prickling to make any noise he doesn’t have to. 

‘Don’t try that on me, El,’ Hardison says. ‘Not when you’ve been… You ain’t okay. Okay? I know that. Drop the- Just accept I know you well enough to get it’s something on top of all the crap you’ve already been through this week. What’s got you breathing all tight and tense just now? There something you need?’

Eliot makes his way down another corridor as Hardison speaks, that voice warm in his ears, and by the end of it his chest feels less tight. A bit. 

‘Kind of a tense situation,’ he mutters, and doesn’t say he wants to wrap Hardison up in one of their quick hugs, the kind where Eliot shoves the guy away after a few moments, because the adrenaline and the reflexes of so many years won’t let him just hold on, but he needs to reassure himself that Hardison is there, that he’s real and that he’s safe and that Eliot is allowed to touch him. ‘Quit jabbering and let me do my job.’

‘Case you missed it, you’re the one we all are trying to keep safe.’

Eliot ghosts across a wider section where the corridor becomes a square with a twisted metal statue in the middle. It looks like someone half blew it apart and called it art. 

‘I’ll be fine,’ he says, but Hardison will need more. He forces something like a smile onto his face, Sophie’s advice running through his mind: They can hear your expression in your voice. ‘You got my back, man.’

That seems to settle Hardison down for now, and Eliot wipes a hand across his own eyes. It’s too hot in here. Damn place makes the air feel thick. 

It would be better if his head didn’t have a constant, pulsing ache. The lighting in here is awful, flat and dead, making everything harsh and unreal. It isn’t helping. He’s too used to working with bruises and blood-loss, and with sundry other physical issues that need factoring in and then pushing through, and he will be very glad when this is done. 

He doesn’t let any of it slow him, taking the route Parker has mapped out and listening whenever Hardison alerts him to possible eyes. 

He makes it to the office he’s aiming for, drops the package off on the desk, and looks at the camera in the corner. Hardison will be able to see him. Lifting a hand, Eliot gestures at the camera, smiles, and points at the desk. 

‘Okay,’ Hardison says, still on that private channel. ‘Great. Job done. Now get out of there. I want you where I can see you.’

Eliot rolls his eyes as he leaves the room. Hardison can see him just fine on the cameras. What the guy really means is he wants Eliot where he can touch him, even if Eliot is too strung out right now to allow it. No way is Eliot letting on how torn he is right now between being left to lurk on his own in a corner and piling on Hardison and Parker and refusing to let them more than a foot away from him.

The way out goes a little faster, and the relief of night air against his face is welcome. 

‘Where you at?’ he asks Hardison.

‘Right where I’m meant to be, baby,’ Hardison says, and goes on before Eliot has to ask him,. ‘Parker and Quinn are on route, Riggs is really selling this vengeance thing, and Detective Murtaugh here needs to learn not to mess with a man’s electronics.’

‘I’m on my way,’ Eliot says.

If the shadows on his route are a little darker than they ought to be, that isn’t something Hardison needs to know.


	67. Chapter 67

Sophie’s blood splatters onto the glass behind her. It’s a huge window, floor to ceiling, and the patterns are almost artistic, like some piece in a modern gallery. Somehow, Hardison got the sounds right. Riggs doesn’t want to know how. 

The body drops. It’s so quick, so immediate, that Riggs has to take a moment to remind himself it isn’t real. No matter how realistic it sounds or how Sophie hits the floor, this is just an act. 

Still, a part of him wants to see her move, to see her…wink at him or something. 

Instead, he hears the booted feet on the floor behind him and he spins on his heel, letting his gun find a new target. The guy he aims at looks like a low-rent Eliot. Maybe most people would be wary, but Riggs knows the real thing. Hell, Riggs is the real thing, even if he isn’t pretending to be exactly Eliot’s brand of crazy. 

Right now, though, he’s pretending to be, or a version of it. 

Mindful of Sophie’s coaching, he doesn’t let his lips stretch into a grin and he doesn’t tilt his head. He doesn’t push his hair back, because it’s tied back more neatly than he normally goes for in something that looks a hell of a lot more controlled. He doesn’t make any one of the comments that line up behind his teeth, ready to trip out and throw the guy in front of him off balance. Him, and the other three scattered behind him.

Instead, Riggs keeps his voice level and his gaze the same, the gun unwavering. That part, at least, is natural.

“You protecting the guy, too? Gonna pretend you don’t know where he is?”

The would-be Eliot answers, doing a pretty good job of looking like he isn’t staring down a bullet. Pretty good. Still not in the big leagues. 

“Detective Riggs?” he asks. The tone makes it clear the question doesn’t need a reply. “Detective Martin Riggs? Or should I say Julian O’Brien?”

Riggs lets some of his irritation at this whole situation show on his face. Another of Sophie’s tips. Just some, and then he locks it down again. Let the other person read what they want from the flash of emotion, Sophie told him, as Hardison rigged her up with what was needed to make her death look convincing. Just show that second of something, and the mark will color in the lines however fits the narrative in their heads.

The guy nods and goes on.

“Do I need to get into rank and serial number, or shall we talk about what we’re all after?”

“And what’s that?” Riggs asks.

“You want payback for what happened to your team,” the guy says. “We can help you with that.”

“Brothers,” Riggs says. He doesn’t need any advice from Sophie or the memory of how Eliot spoke about that team to get the bite, the weight and the sorrow right on that word. He’s got his own memories for that. “Not just a team. Not out there. Not after what we went through. And it’s not payback I want.”

That seems to throw the guy, the mark, for a moment. He blinks.

“You’re looking for the same man we are,” he says. 

Riggs nods. 

“Yeah, I am. But not for payback.”

“Then what for?”

Riggs does smile then, but it’s not the kind that makes people check if he’s been drinking or that has people lecturing him on taking things seriously. This is the kind of smile that speaks of teeth in the dark.

“The guy calling himself Eliot Spencer turned on his own,” Riggs says. “So I’m going to find him and I’m going to hurt him and I’m going to kill him. But that won’t be payback.”

“Then what will it be?” the guy asks. There’s no mention of telling Riggs to back off, no mention of him getting himself arrested or worse if he goes after this. 

“Justice.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have not decided if I will add to this, but I might. We'll see. I have ideas. Some of them are not crack.
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr. I'm [humanformdragon](http://humanformdragon.tumblr.com/).


End file.
